1933 Double Eagles in the News

Well this is where it gets them---when the mint recalled them they recalled the coins dated 1933----so while the gold was still there that would be looked as in being more of a gift to the mint since they didn't recall that.
Don't get me wrong---I agree with ya'll and I think the family should get them but like I said above---they better have some way of proof that they wern't stolen---and in turn so should the mint...

Speedy

 

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In 1947, L. G. Barnard of Memphis challenged the seizure of his coin. The Federal prosecutor and Treasury lawyer argued that "no 1933 double eagle, except the 2 in the Smithsonian's collection, could have left the mint, so Barnard's coin must have been stolen. And if it had been stolen, it belonged to the United States." (page 104, Double Eagle by Allison Frankel)

Two other cases ended similarly for 1933's, one in 1947 and one in 1956. So there is a judicial precedent that all has decreed all 1933's to be considered stolen.



....

 

The Government will win hands down. The coins were never legally released for circulation and regardless of how someone may have obtained them thereafter, they are illegal to own. It's not a matter of proving whether someone is the legal owner of this coin(s) or not, they were never legal in the first place. Read Illegal Tender and you realize that the Government has all the cards in this matter. Fascinating history of the mint and the politics of US coins.

 

I read that book and its completely specius. This is a straight constituional issue of property rights and the Mint has no cards in this but obscuring the facts.

Let it ride in the popular press and run the case through the supreme court and see how stupid the mint and the Department of Treasury will look.

Ruben

 

Well Ruben, I''d read it again if I were you. It was pretty clear that the government holds all the cards in this debate as I have said.

 

Well if I had one I probably would melt it down before I would let them have it! However, it would be nice to call them up and tell that I have one and when they come over to get it, I would invite them in and show them that the coin is ready for them to pick up. That is, in a glass container which I filled with some good old wizz just before they arrived.

Sorry but that is how I feel about it!


Frank

 

Frank:
Well, now I know why I like you! You attitude resembles mine, I'd also melt it before I would give it up.
Let them prove what the date was.
But, I'd hide the other two pieces in your house.
:secret:
The Other Frank

 

If I could get the one that is still out there in private hands, I'd buy it in a place like Switzerland and put it in a safe deposit box there. Then I'd take a photo of it, send the photo to jerks in DC with the caption, "You missed one!!!", and post it on these boards for you all.

Yeah, IF I could afford it. HAHA! :goofer:

If that's not an option, I could send it in to the PCGS for grading and slabbing... :rolling: :goofer: :goofer:

 

The US Constitution assumes innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. As the arguments made over and over on this site alone make clear, even if Israel Switt is guilty of stealing 19 coins, there is reasonable doubt enough to prevent any proving of his guilt . Therefore, if he didn't steal them, the government has to prove the specific 10 coins in question are stolen property. They can't simply say, "We didn't let any out except the ones at the Smithsonian." The Fenton coin from a few years back disproves that statement. And if that one got out, so could others.

 

Speedy:
Actually, the government's recall did not specify any particular date on the gold coin recall. FDR's recall order specified the recall of any and all gold coins. Later this was amended to exempt coins of particular numismatic value.
The 1933 $10 eagle was released earlier in the year, over the counter and is not subject to seizure. The Govt's logic is that the coins were not legally issued, that is the logic for the recall. However, there was a period of time, perhaps only a few days, when it was permissable to obtain the newly minted coins over the counter at the mint, as was the tradition at the time.
So, move the coins to Switzerland.

 

Frank
I'll have to go back and look again---if your right (and more than likely you are) then this opens up something new---I was under the thinking that somewhere there was a recall for the 1933 $20 gold pieces.
Otherwise---if they recalled all of the coins then even a gold coin dated something else would be against the law right??

Speedy

 

Actually, under FDR, for a period of time it was illegal for US citizens to own gold. I'll get the citation later.
However, his Secretary of the treasury (I believe) was a coin collector and got the law amended.
This is why we (US citizens) could not own South African Kruggerands for years, until Richard Nixon changed the law about private ownership of gold.
Frank
More to follow.

 

No one is or has been tried for stealing the coins so this isn't the issue. The claim is that they are government property and no matter who has them, they still belong to the rightful owners, the US government.

 

From David Ganz, a noted numismatic writer:
FDR took office March 4, 1933 (the January 20th inauguration we take for granted today did not begin until 1940) and shortly thereafter, the New Deal required millions of dollars worth of gold coinage to be turned in by citizens who held them, acting on a government mandate and under a Presidential Proclamation requiring it.

Only rare and unusual gold coins were exempt -- enough to allow coin collectors to maintain and keep a collection, assuming that they would be able to do that during the depths of economic despair of 1934.

FDR’s Presidential Papers offer a partial explanation as to why he nationalized gold, ended the striking of gold coins, and prohibited ownership of gold bullion by all Americans. On January 31, 1934, his papers show that he wrote he was taking his action “to maintain a reasonably stable cost of living . . . to foster steadily increasing employment . . . to maintain such position of the dollar with reference to other currencies as would encourage an increasing domestic and foreign trade . . . to eliminate broad fluctuations in exchange rates without sacrificing sovereignty over our monetary policy . . . (and) to avoid competitive depreciation of currencies.”
During the banking holiday, Roosevelt prohibited the operation of any banking institution, prohibited any bank from paying out, exporting or earmarking gold or gold coins, and temporarily suspended the striking of gold coin by the Mint.

Roosevelt's action, one leading constitutional scholar, Henry Mark Holzer wrote in a 1973 retrospective law review article, was probably illegal at best, and unconstitutional at its worst. Yet, the American people were desperate; a depression gripped the land. Roosevelt, they believed, offered salvation -- a New Deal, even if it was without gold.

Systematically, Roosevelt acted to remove gold from the citizenry, the banks, and the Federal Reserve. The key purpose of the action was to prevent any citizen from buttressing his currency against the debasement about to be perpetrated by the government.

The government's gold stock in 1933 consisted of $2.3 billion in bullion and $806.4 million in gold coin of various denominations. The Federal Reserve held $743-million in gold coin, and a fraction of that amount ($66.5 million) in bullion.
In 1973, gold regulations were eased slightly, to allow more gold coins minted between 1933 and 1961 to be admitted to the country as “rare” coins, however, a drive in Congress to reverse the action of four decades before failed when the House failed by a single vote to call for immediate ownership.

By early 1974, the President had gained the legal authority from Congress to allow private gold ownership at any time he felt it is in the best interests of the international economic situation of the United States.
Gold ownership finally came about in one of the most unusual unitings of interest of diverse political elements -- the conservative "gold bugs" and the liberal democrats.

Succinctly, the Democrats had a foreign aid package that was in need of passage; the conservative Republican "gold bugs", most of whom had voted against every foreign aid proposal that ever came before Congress saw a truly golden opportunity.

They added a clause to the foreign aid bill that would simultaneously legalize private gold ownership by a certain day, but also retroactively repeal all of the regulations and laws that impeded holding the precious metal.
For more info: http://www.numismedia.com/law/index.shtml

 

Moen:
If no one has been tried for stealing the coins, and stealing them is not the issue, how could they not be legal to own?
If they are government property and they are not in the hands of the government, then they must have been stolen, as they (the government) have stated many times.
But, if they (the coins) were stolen, and a crime has been committed, under our constitution, don't you have to prove that a crime was committed?
Or is this another case where the parties are guilty until proven innocent.

 

I wrote an article about this topic once---and this was something that I couldn't find much about...
So if they recalled ALL gold---and didn't list the date 1933 then the ONLY thing the mint has for their case is that they can say that they never issued ANY of these coins to circulation....IF they can prove that--then they are right----

Speedy

 

As I stated before: However, there was a period of time, perhaps only a few days, when it was permissable to obtain the newly minted coins over the counter at the mint, as was the tradition at the time."
This is the crux of the arguement.
They cannot prove that no one obtained the coins in this manner, and (strangely) it has been said that the records from that time period are missing. That is supposed to be why the gov't settled in the Fenton case. Because they did not want to disclose the info to the public, perhaps this would have made all 1933 $20's legal?
Why not release the records under the FOI Act?

 

That kind of proof is not valid under the law. The mint must affirmatively prove a crime was commited, report said crime, and the government must then accuse an individual of said crime and such evidence must be brought against said individual and proven to a jury of peers beyound a resonable doubt. Your describing cricumstantial evidence which for good reason is considered inadmisable.


Ruben

 

Under the constitution the Government can not just declare something as their property which is in pocesion of an individual. There is no evidence of a crime.

Ruben