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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jolumoga, post: 26811417, member: 41780&quot;]I&#039;ve come full circle with the memo. At first I was dismissive (&quot;it&#039;s just a government memo, folks&quot;), then I was impressed as I read into it (&quot;everyone is excited by this, I&#039;m an idiot who of course was missing some important things, as is often the case&quot;), and now I&#039;m back to where I started (&quot;I was right to be skeptical of a decades old bureaucratic memo&quot;). I see this is a bureaucratic memo.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think the subtext and context are important to understand the memo. Actually, much of the conversation in this thread gives us that context (people were scared of keeping their gold coins, and after the ban did not care to hoard gold and become potential martyrs to a gold cause, with some notable exceptions). There was a numismatic carve-out early on with the help of the Treasury Secretary Woodin. So the government gave coin dealers the kid glove treatment. Whether it was benevolence or simply a pragmatic focus, the government chose not to pick a fight with numismatists. So what coins could qualify as numismatic was never fully resolved. The Treasury chose a broad definition, as I see it, to avoid picking a fight with the courts. Had the Treasury prosecuted the coin dealers as the Secret Service seemingly wanted, they would not have had the final say in determining what constitutes a numismatic coin. However, they would have had endless resources to prosecute the case. But it&#039;s clear there were either good people in the Treasury or maybe they decided to just pick their battles more intelligently - using the lawyers on their staff with more precision in cases they knew were the strongest. </p><p><br /></p><p>It sounds to me like the Treasury had some brains within their bureaucracy.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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