The REAL Story of the Langbord 1933’s

Except it's basically impossible to get your reputation back in court. Any competent litigator on the other-side of any issue would just bring it up and it's game over

 

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As their son Roy explained over on CU, they were honest people. They didn't KNOW any criminals to secretely sell the coins to.

What's interesting is that the family heeded the advice of Roy's father (who trusted the government) rather than act in the shadows (like his grandfather).

Regardless, there was no way to sell the coins or even announce possession without working with the Mint.

What I would have done is only given 1 of the coins for authentication purposes. I would have hidden the other 9. I would have insisted a deal be cut before I disclosed the other coins. The Mint lied and negotatiated in bad faith.

You guys who submit coins to PCGS and NGC know it is usually a 2-week turnaround. It took The Mint 9 months to get the coins authenticated/graded. It was all a crock.

You're liable to see more of them in private hands and auctions like the 1927-D I saw at FUN than with them collecting dust at Fort Knox.

They've been out visible to the public by my count a total of 4 days in 15 years. The Mint wasn't exactly honest when they said they belonged to "The People."

 

The guy (Switt) bought them from the mint cashier (so was said).........what's all the hub, bub?

 

Except it wasn't stolen, the government never was missing 10 ounces of gold. It was clearly exchanged.

They WERE missing 250 1928 Double Eagles....but they didn't expend 1/10th the effort to track down an entire bag of missing Saints. Most of their efforts went into passing legislation to get the Mint Superintendent off the hook for personal liability for the missing $5,000 in gold coins -- he WAS innocent, he signed that the books were in order upon assuming command, but there was an inherited shortfall.

Not his fault, but instructive how they treated one of their own (Dressel) and Switt (confiscated 78 coins he had when his gold license lapsed).

 

Not even close unless you use express. It's more like 4 weeks minimum in normal times and up to 8 or more when they're slammed

These coins were probably a couple days given the tier they would have to have been submitted in, but that's completely irrelevant anyways. They could have been debating doing it for weeks or months and a million other things. Authenticating coins for the public is so far down on the Mints priority list I would expected it to take a long time

 

OK, point taken. My point is that anybody -- government or individual -- with 10 million-dollar coins is using express grading or doing a walk-in. Hell, if PCGS or NGC knew that folks from the Mint or Treasury were stopping by with ten 1933 Saint-Gaudens, they'd have dropped everything to authenticate and grade them.

They weren't gonna say "we have a bunch of wheat pennies that need grading, we'll call you when we're ready."

They should have had a response from NGC/PCGS back in days...a week or two, tops. Not 9 months. That to me, more than most anything said in the trial, showed bad faith and lying by the Mint.

How many super-rare, allegedly "stolen" coins worth 7-figures do they take possession of that need grading ?

They were clearly stalling to pass certain time thresholds for legal forfeiture and seizure rulings. They sure hurried to GET the coins from the Langbords....then snoozed along time doing nothing.

 

The reality is when your expert is discredited in court so is basically any chance of winning. Would the outcome have changed otherwise maybe not but we will never know and the precedent is now set and will basically be impossible to overturn. It wasn't the mint delaying when to get them graded or anything with the TPGs, once the person you brought to try and convince them it was plausible gets eviscerated on the stand your case is done.

https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/1933-double-eagle-trial-roger-burdette-takes-.html
"Perhaps more problematic was a Feb. 10, 2009, posting that has since become inaccessible where Burdette wrote to the effect of mustering all the hearsay and innuendo required to obfuscate the facts; adding, “I’ll do it at $300 an hour.” Rue wasted no time in asking Burdette, “Isn’t that what you’ve done here today?”"

As soon as he posted that on CU the case was over as was his reputation in the court

 

The judge laid down the rules before the trial: if the jury found for the government, they keep the coins. If the jury found for the Langbords, he -- the judge -- will decide who gets the coins.

In other words, we have the old Ralph Kramden "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" guidelines.

I don't think RWB was discredited. He wasn't even allowed to testify fully on Philly mint operations at the time. Hell, Burdette -- NOT the Mint -- is the one who got the initial coining date correct (March 2, 1933)...noted they were with the Cashier by March 4th....and lots of other critical dates. You would think the government/Philly Mint would know their operations better than an outsider but that wasn't the case.

I agree that the U.S. Attorney's were very good at throwing mud at RWB and confusing the jury and distracting from the real issue at hand. Having a biased judge with an inflated sense of his own intellect also didn't help.

I also don't think the Langbord's attorney(s) did as good a job here as they did with the settlement negotiation on the Farouk coin. At one point the judge -- actually helping the Langbord side -- told their attorney he was losing the jury with minutae by focusing on a thousand different points of interest and facts (something I can relate to ). When the judge tells you you are not only losing him but some of the jurors are falling alseep on your intricate points of fact, you are in trouble.

I don't think that really mattered, unless the jury was dumber than they appeared (quite possible ).

I think the Langbord's needed to utilize a KISS strategy -- Keep It Simple Stupid -- as there was no way a lay jury was going to understand detailed Mint operations.

I would have focused on the following:

• There was no gold missing, hence the coins could not have been stolen.
• The Mint didn't even know key dates for 1st striking of 1933's and when they were at the Cashier, so how can they say their records were complete and accurate ?
• They didn't know that the Fenton/Farouk coin had a Treasury Export License -- before that they wanted the coin back AND the owner criminally prosecuted.
• The Mint has been obsessed with getting back exchanged 1933's because they got BURNED with the actually STOLEN 1928 Saints....250, worth $5,000 at the time.
• You had over a month (until April 12, 1933) to coin-for-coin exchange 1933's.
• 43 of the 1932's got destroyed and were replaced with 1933's....these coins were with the Cashier as of March 4th.
• Over 35 of the 1933 Eagles are out there. The Mint says they are "legal" because they can't tell which of the 35 coins are among the 5 that are legally recorded and which of the rest were done via legal exchange (or stolen, in the Mint's parlance ). In other words, had a single 1933 Double Eagle been recorded in the books, ALL 1933 DE's would be legal to own because they can't tell which ones are the legal one(s) and which are the exchanged/stolen ones. Pretty flimsy reasoning, if you ask me....
• If the coins are "national treasures" and not destined to be destroyed, why not thank the family that preserved them instead of denigrating them ?

The initial trial court locked in a set of "facts" that are not representative of what really happened in 1933. Higher courts were bound by them (unfortunately).

And it's not a perfect analogy, but when you go into a bank and deposit $100...they give you a receipt with an updated balance. Go into that same bank and give them $100 and ask for two $50 bills. They give it to you -- without a receipt. Same thing with coin-for-coin exchanges for the most part for decades leading up to the events of 1933.

I think our hobby is the poorer for this idiotic decision.

BTW....Burdette's new Saint-Gaudens book has a few new and detailed pages of what happened with the 1933's. It makes for good reading. He focused on the new hires at Treasury and Mint making decisions in the 1940's and not the folks who were there in the 1930's.

 

I know you're a big fan of his, but the federal court is not. There's nothing to debate and I'll refer to my previous posts.

If you read the thread I was in favor of them being allowed to have them, but it's a done deal

 

As an aside, Bball, are you into Saints ? Have you checked out RWB's new book ? 600+ pages...but outstanding.

Have to buy it from HA, not available via Amazon. Strange....

 

I like them to an extent, I like the 2.5 and 1 dollar a lot more though in terms of US gold.

PS I do agree with you about the final outcome, but it is what it is and we can't treat courts or federal courts like coin clubs or a show. I would have loved to have seen what the outcome could have been otherwise

 

They weren't "officially" stolen government property until the case was decided and all appeals ended. Until then they were just stolen property in the governments opinion.

Problem is if you don't tell them about the other 9 and just make a deal on the one, it doesn't apply to the other 9. You will have to make another deal each time you bring more out. If you bring out one and admit tot he other 9 the government would insist on seizing all of them before "negotiating".

The Government position was the Cashier stole them so Swit received stolen government property. Title doesn't pass and they are still government property.

 

On that we are in agreement.

Roy Langbord said over on CU that their biggest mistake was thinking that the government would be amenable to a settlement as with the Farouk/Fenton coin. There were some at the Mint and Treasury who wanted that, but not the higher-ups.

 

Except that no gold was missing on the books so this theory has a major hole in it. It's certain an exchange took place, we just don't know WHEN it took place.

And I personally think the Philly Mint getting embarassed with $5,000 in 1928's missing somehow colored their thinking on how to proceed with the 1933's.

 

The big, crucial difference between the Farouk coin and the Langbord coins was that Farouk's people secured an export license for that coin. I was a clever ploy taking advantage of lack of communication between US government departments. The export license was obtained from the State Department, and to keep up good relationships with Egypt, they granted it without consulting the Treasury Department.

The Langbords made a fundamental negotiating mistake ... they gave the other side everything it wanted, then tried to negotiate to get some back. It's like selling your house where you sign over the deed first and then tell the buyer, "Let's talk price."

Cal

 

Same lawyer handling their case did the Fenton/Farouk deal.

I am not sure reading RL's posts if they ever got some things in writing as opposed to oral agreements. But they were clearly unprepared for the bare-knuckle, scorched-earth tactics of the government.

 

Yes I am well aware of that thread and read it years ago when it happened. He was very polite and gracious in his thread, I would have had a very different opinion of the expert if I was him

 

They also had David Bowers as a witness (not sure if he testified in person or in writing/on video) and maybe R.W. Julian. Someobody at CU was also on the Call List if there was another trial; RL said that the CU poster was on their short list. Not sure who he is, though.

 

Not really a "clever ploy", just following the law. 1933 double eagles were openly bought and sold, Farouk wanted one and his representative bought one. But under the law any gold coin being taken out of the country had to have an export license. So they applied for one. Such licenses were typically granted as a matter of course as long as the coin was dated 1933 or earlier and this one was granted as well and the coin was exported. This all took place before the Government suddenly decided that the coins were stolen.

The fact the export license existed was never of much importance until it was used in the Fenton case as an argument that in the granting of the license, it had also recognized ownership as well. (How can you give a license to export something you don't own?) And the license was no surprise, it's existence had been known long before the Fenton case came up.

 

Good point, but actually it wasn't a ploy, it was just the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

With the ban on holding/owning/selling gold in full-force, you needed an export license so they got one. The Mint could have caught the "error" but didn't.