Posted on 04/18/2015 7:29:36 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen
A family was awarded the rights to 10 rare gold coins possibly worth $80 million or more on Friday after a U.S. appeals court overturned a jury verdict.
U.S. Department of the Treasury officials insist the $20 Double Eagles were stolen from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia before the 1933 series was melted down when the country went off the gold standard. They argued that Joan Langbord and her sons cannot lawfully own the coins, which she said she found in a family bank deposit box in 2003.
Langbord's father, jeweler Israel Switt, had dealings with the Mint in the 1930s and was twice investigated over his coin holdings. A jury in 2012 sided with the governmen
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Thank you.
The Institute for Justice is going after “policing for profit” around the country, including cases where they pull over lots of people with out of state plates to search, threatened to call CPS to take kids if you don’t give up cash because “travelling with children is a known tactic to lower your profile”, and Philadelphia’s byzantine process to try to take homes and businesses because one person was arrested in the house.
The Saddle Ridge Hoard was found in April, 2013 by a couple who were walking on their property in the California Gold Country, hours east of San Francisco.
They saw a rusty can sticking out of the ground, went to investigate, and realized it was loaded with uncirculated $5, $10 and $20 gold coins.
The couple took the can home, returned with a metal detector, and found another can or two.
The coins included a $20 1866 gold coin without the motto “In God We Trust” ..... an extremely rare coin worth $1 million by itself.
The coins were determined NOT to be the coins that were stolen from the U.S. Mint in San Francisco in the early 20th Century. The mint said they, the mint, had no claim on the coins. Apparently they were the stash of a private citizen long ago.
Some of the coins were minted in Georgia in the 1830’s.
The coins were placed with a top-notch coin dealer in Tiburon, California and were graded by Pacific Coast Grading Service in Newport Beach, Calif. Some of the coins were auctioned on Amazon last May.
The numismatic value of the hoard....$10 million.
Of course, the couple will have to pay income taxes to the IRS and State of California from the sale of any coins.
realistically what was the damage to the US government ?
I would say around $200.
He, of course, had no authority to do that
This case is really complicated, because it involves the (now dead) power of Congress to "coin money, and regulate the value thereof".
Gold and silver coins did not become money (legal tender) when struck. They belonged to the Bureau of the Mint, as bullion, EVEN THOUGH LOOKING LIKE COINS, until Congress authorized release through legislation, at which point they (still property of the Bureau of the Mint) became legal tender money ("monetized") instead of bullion, no longer worth their gold/silver content but now worth the value stamped or incused on their reverses.
Once the Bureau of the Mint sent them out to banks, and the banks distributed them as withdrawals, they became the property of the holders, as their own real money.
Because there has been no real money since 1964, these concepts are very difficult for Americans who have never actually possessed real money to understand.
The government contends that no 1933-date gold coin-like objects were ever monetized, and that hence the fact of their sojourn outside of the Philadelphia Mint constituted theft of government bullion.
Looking forward to the episode of Pawn Stars where they attempt to sell them to Rick.
I’m going with the family.
You’re welcome :-)
The government contends that no coin-like objects made of gold and dated 1933 were ever monetized, and that therefore they are bullion belonging to the Bureau of the Mint.
On the plaintiff's side, the government made gifts of (a few) 1933 gold coins to some foreign dignitaries, representing them to be legal tender.
FDR's unconstitutional "executive order" overriding Congress's power to "coin money, and regulate the value thereof" screwed up the legal status of all gold coinage from 1 January to 6 March, 1933, and the fact that most of what was obviously intended to be legal tender was destroyed after 6 March should not affect the legal tender status of coins that survived.
The CORRECT legal resolution of this case (which no court would ever order) is to declare FDR's gold order void and to order the possessors of these coins to pay the Bureau of the Mint $20 in Federal Reserve Notes (which the government recognizes as legal tender) for each coin in their possession.
Instead, the court found a technicality to end the case without addressing the underlying issues.
Silly me - and here I thought that we were “innocent” and the prosecution had the burden of “proving” guilt. If judge can throw out a jury decision, then why have a jury at all? Why not simply have a monarchy?
“Were they proven stolen?”
I don’t think anyone seriously denies that the coins were stolen from the mint. The question became how did Israel Switt get possession of them. Personally I believe Switt was somehow involved in the crime since he miraculously ended up with multiple examples of this unissued coin and he kept his possession a secret and never contacted the treasury about these coins which every collector knew then and now, were never supposed to be in private hands.
Your early half dollars were likely all issued coins so there is a big difference.
This decision was overturned on a technicality and basically says that crime does pay (albeit not for Mr Switt but instead, his heirs).
“Looking forward to the episode of Pawn Stars where they attempt to sell them to Rick.”
“Well,,,, I’ll have to get them framed, and they’ll take up a lot of wall space.”
I can absolutely prove I own everything of consequence, house, cars, bank accounts, etc... If the government wants to spend thousands of dollars to take my lawnmower, they can knock themselves out.
A question for the attorneys out there. Doesn't the first ruling establish that the U. S. Mint is the rightful owner of the coins? Did the appeal overturn this adjudicated fact?
The second ruling seems to be a technical ruling which bars the government from using the Civil Assets Forfeiture Reform Act as a basis for the return of the coins. That wouldn't bar the use of the other statutes to force the return of the coins. Right? Alternatively, couldn't the federal government just wait until the coins were sold to another party, then sue the other party under CAFRA (this time doing the paperwork right)? I would think that an investor would think long and hard before buying the coins with such a clouded title - at a minimum, it looks like years of litigation with a real possibility of seizure.
I'm not as sympathetic to these people as I was to those who found the coins in California. It looks like these people had possession of $80 million of coins that didn't belong to them. In the former case, the previous ownership of the coins couldn't be established, here it sounds like it was.
LOL!
Great questions. I would also like to know if it matters that the jeweler had an expert knowledge in rare coins and probably knew they were stolen and intended to fence them off a later date as opposed to a layperson person who may have accidentally found them or inherited them as in this case.
Goldbug ping.
But he’d have to frame them...and, then, it is hard to find a buyer...and they’d take up shelf space...and they look a little worn.
Actually, I recall an episode where they bought a Morgan Silver Dollar for close to 1,000,000.
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