1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle Graded MS65 (no holder !)

Even the Mint/Treasury said the public could exchange coins up to April 12th, 1933.

 

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It was completely clear. Insisting otherwise doesn't make it so. NO ONE disputes the fact that the coins were demonitorized and slated for destruction.

 

Not the 1933 coins. They were explicilty pulled from circulation prior to distributiuon. This is 100% the facts.

 

The Mint and Treasury say otherwise.

Actually, he never mentioned it. Had he run on a policy of taking American's gold holdings, he might not have gotten elected.

 

Source ? They were never circulated, so how could they be pulled ?

 

Executive Order 6102, which provisions included:

Section 2. All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, with the exception of the following:

(a) Such amount of gold as may be required for legitimate and customary use in industry, profession or art within a reasonable time, including gold prior to refining and stocks of gold in reasonable amounts for the usual trade requirements of owners mining and refining such gold.
(b) Gold coin and gold certificates in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate $100.00 belonging to any one person; and gold coins having recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins.
(c) Gold coin and bullion earmarked or held in trust for a recognized foreign government or foreign central bank or the Bank for International Settlements.
(d) Gold coin and bullion licensed for the other proper transactions (not involving hoarding) including gold coin and gold bullion imported for the re-export or held pending action on applications for export license.
Congress additionally passed the Gold Reserve Act in 1934, which outlawed the circulation and private possession of United States gold coins for general circulation, with an exemption for collector coins. This act declared that gold coins were no longer legal tender in the United States, and people had to turn in their gold coins for other forms of currency. The 1933 gold double eagles were struck after this executive order, but because they were no longer legal tender, most of the 1933 gold coins were melted down in late 1934 and some were destroyed in tests.

 

Correct. I misspoke. They were NEVER monetarized and never circulated. But they were STOLEN.

 

In truth, the Mint should never had struck them in the first place and they were likely in violation of the executive act that made them illegal to circulate or monetize. Regardless, once they were made, they were prohibited from the executive order to distribute them, and the fact that they turned up in the public later was because of theft of mint property.

 

Oh, they were never MONETIZED !!

Like every other coin other than the "Farouk" coin:



The government came up with the monetization argument to help make the coins "illegal" unless the government said so.

 

Actually, the 1933 Saints started to be struck on March 2nd, 1933 -- during the Hoover Administration.

The governments records on 1933 Saints being struck and also on exchanges are all over the place. Roger Burdette goes over this at-length in his recent magnus opus on Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles.

 

Nobody thought the coins would be destroyed at the time otherwise they would have asked higher-ups why spend $$$ minting coins that will be melted down ?

The expectation was that the Double Eagles at the Philly Mint would be used in international trade settlements, if not allowed to be owned by the public.

Again, the first 1933 Saints were struck on March 2nd, 1933.....FDR was sworn in as president on March 4th, 1933.

 

CPLradar, we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

I enjoyed the back-and-forth: hard fought, but civil and respectful. I want to allow others to chime in too on the OP or related stuff without having to wade through more back-and-forths, hope you understand.

I will end with this timeline for anybody who is interested:

• March 2nd, 1933: 1st 1933 Saint-Gaudens DEs are struck. The official Mint records and most previous sources do NOT cite March 2nd as the date of first striking, but March 15th. Roger Burdette uncovered this discrepancy from a letter dated 1945.
• March 4th: FDR sworn in as president
• March 5th: Last official gold shipment to Federal Reserve banks leaves the Mint
• March 6th: Treasury Secretary Woodin (a coin collector) orders Mint Director Robert J. Grant to not "pay out" any more gold. Grant complies, with an addendum: ".....this does not prohibit the deposit of gold and the usual payment thereof."
• March 7th: A wire is sent from an Asst Attorney General stating that Mint personnel could continue exchanging gold coins for gold coins.
• March 15th: A letter is sent by Acting Director Mary M. O'Reilly (Mint Director Robert J. Grant was on leave) informing Lewis Froman of Buffalo, NY that he could deposit gold bullion directly at the Mint in exchange for gold coin because it "....neither increases nor depletes the stock of gold in the Treasury."
• April 5th: FDR's Executive Order 6102 goes into effect.
• April 12th: Last "legal" day for the public to participate in coin-for-coin exchanges.
• May-June (?): An entire bag (250) of 1928 Saint-Gaudens DEs is stolen from the Philly Mint vault. The bag appears to have been stolen at the same time that 1933 Saints were placed in the vault.

 

You don't know that and it doesn't matter. The executive order makes them stolen property PERIOD.

 

https://www.jamestwining.com/learn-more/the-double-eagle/double-eagle-history/
McCann denied any involvement with the theft but the Secret Service was convinced they had got their man. They bought charges against him and Switt but when Strang took his evidence to the US attorney in Philadelphia, the US Department of Justice said it couldn’t prosecute either of them because the statute of limitations had run out.

 

But when they left the mint they were STOLEN. You keep forgetting that part.

 

I did? You need to work on your reading comprehension...

There’s conjecture when nobody here is willing to attribute this specimen as the Farouk coin. Any PCGS “certification” is just that, it’s an attribution. There are the Stack’s-Bowers photos and I’m sure plenty of others out there. Why aren’t anybody looking at those and making an attribution on this coin? For that matter, why didn’t anybody make an attribution as such in the former auction? That’s as half-assed as this auction. This coin is attributed on marketing-hype. If they’ve got better than that, let’s see it.

 

At roughly the same time, Ernest A. Kehr, the stamp and coin columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, noticed that Stack’s, the famous coin house, was selling the “celebrated collection” of Colonel James Flanagan. Among the last lots was a 1933 Double Eagle described in the catalogue as “excessively rare” and “the first one that ever came up in any public auction.”


Intrigued, Kehr approached the Mint, asking them how many 1933 Double Eagles had been released to the public. The answer was categorical: none. But faced with Kehr’s evidence the Mint’s acting director, Leland Howard, had no choice but to notify Frank Wilson, the chief of the Secret Service, that at least one and possible more coins had been stolen from the Mint.

 

The only thing I will say is that I don't know why the government had to feel that they had to destroy them. They could have found something much more creative to do with them, once the legal status was squared away.

 

How about....they're idiots ?

They should have just placed the seized coins in museums or added them to the Smithsonian Collection.

Instead, they showed their antipathy for the coin hobby by destroying them.

 

But this 1933 Double Eagle was released to a private individual. That’s what that export license in effect says. Government had its chance to claim custody of it but rather in the grant of the export license acknowledged the individual owned it. Therein is what makes this ownership lawful regardless what the Mint’s intent was when these were minted, whether they were stolen from the Mint, or what have you, however they “escaped.” It’s not the issue as regards this one. Forget whether they were stolen from the Mint or not, the Government “spoke” on this one.