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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 444551, member: 4626&quot;]Well not a legal expert and so no point for me to continue arguing on the basis of opinion and belief.</p><p><br /></p><p>But the government has the coins (possesion in 9/10 of the law and so forth...) for now at least.&nbsp; There is no legal precendent (an actual test in court) for whether or not the government (specifically, the Treasury Department) has a right to declare whether coins they produce are legal to own or not... the Switt case will be the first.&nbsp; The one double eagle the government considers legal to own was settled out of court.&nbsp; For what they&#039;ve considered illegal to own, they&#039;ve seized them, and nobody fought them over it; or the possesors voluntarily turned them over, and not challenged it; or the government decided to turn a blind eye and not bother proseucting it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Either way it turns out it will be a landmark case, setting a precendent for the first time as whether or not the government has the right to determine which of the products are legal to own or not... will be an important decision as it will set a precendent for other rarities that may not have been officially issued (and patterns, and other such things).</p><p><br /></p><p>On the government&#039;s side, they claim that none of the 1933 double eagles were ever legally issued, and that all of them were always government property, and remain so, whehter they can prove the theft of them or not.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the Switt&#039;s side, they claim that there is a theoretically possibility that they could have been legally issued, and the government has never proven they were ever stolen in the first place, therefore they should get them back unless and until the government can prove they were stolen.</p><p><br /></p><p>(BTW, on a technical note, the government didn&#039;t precisely seize them... the Switts had turned them over to the government for authentication, then the government refused to return them with the declaration that they are not legal to own.&nbsp; Still a seizure in the sense they deprived the Switts of the ownership of them, but they didn&#039;t burst into their house and confiscate the coins or anything like that.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Who&#039;s right?&nbsp; We can argue back on forth on this as to what the law and Constitution says, and how to interpret it, but until it&#039;s tested in a court of law, there&#039;s no way to tell how it all stands up under a legal test.</p><p><br /></p><p>I look forward to finding out, one way or the other.&nbsp; Keep your eyes open as to how this case turns out; it&#039;ll be a very important one![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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