Heirs Lose Fight With Gov't to Keep Rare Gold Coins

I hear you saltysam-1.

 

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Although I don't totally agree with the outcome, I understand WHY it happened.

There were no criminal charges presented, only the issue of legal ownership. This is a civil case which means there is no 'innocent until proven guilty' because there is not innocent/guilty findings. Civil charges only determine who is most likely to deserve a favorable outcome, even if it is by the slimmest of margins, and how much 'in favor' the outcome should be.

You can be cleared of a criminal charge, such as theft, but still be responsible for any damages that happened as a result of your possible theft attempt or the loss of property if you are found to have it in your possession, if they are presented as separate cases.

Something I thought would have been an interesting plea bargain for the heirs would have been to pay for the replacement cost of the gold at melt value (and possible cost of manufacturing 10 coins) since that is the LEGAL cost of replacing those coins to the US govt.

 

Every museum in this country contains statues, artifacts and antiquities that were removed from their native countries by questionable means. Some of this is war booty ("to the victor goes the spoils") but much was simply taken by explorers. Lately, some of these exhibits have been returned to their original countries, but a majority have not been.

 

Look, the US mint does not just hand out free coins. They are sold ! And records are kept with receipts of sales of EVERY coin. These coins were removed from the mint property without being paid for. Hence STOLEN !!!! It does not matter who stole them, they still are legal property of the US Mint. Period. You cannot take something and hand it to someone else and it become theirs. The law just doesn;t work like that. Even if a jury had awarded them to the heirs, this verdict would have been overturned simply as a matter of law. Legal Ownership is retained no matter how many people "fench" the stolen goods, or how many different people possess them at one time or another. Simple possession of these coins was a crime in itself, and I am surprised the Atty General did not file charges. Perhaps, because they returned the stolen items ?

Any, "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride". The laws don't change just because someone wishes it. It takes legislation, and no society is going to legalize "theft" or allow people to profit legally from it. IMHO

gary

 

True, and they are being reclaimed by the rightful owners to this very day. Just because a museum has it, doesn't mean they can KEEP it ! And it is a bit more difficult for a Foreign entity to reclaim stolen property than it is for a government to do so on their own soil. These stolen coins were sought by the government for decades. They finally found them and they were recovered.

 

If you read some of the articles you would notice that they were paid for ... by coins with other dates. Why does the goverment care so much anyway? they didint lose any gold. LOL this argument has heated up. Either you care too much or you work in the government.
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The coins went out the gold exchange window, where they you could exchange gold for gold. If you go to a bank and exchange two $10.00s for a $20.00, no one hands you a receipt or bill of sale At the end of the day, you count cash in and cash out. No one keeps records of which version of $20.00 bills are in the till or how many. The till balanced and no one ever reported a theft. At this time, a twenty dollar St. Gaudiens was $20.00. The question no one seems to answer is, how that particular year wound up in the till at the exchange window. I doubt the cashiers at the mint go to the vault and set their own tills. The only thing that makes this look shady, is that all the coins can be traced to one outside party, the cashier and his pawn broker. This all goes back to the age old question of, if a cashier sees a coin in their till that may be of some value, can they exchange it for one of their own.

PS; you can check out numerious threads on that question.

 

But I thought the government had proof that they never sent 1933 Doubles to the exchange window. That was the basis of their case. To be sent to the window double sets of paperwork were needed to be filled out, and that happened for the $10's, which is why the government does not fight them since there is no way to prove they weren't obtained this way. However, this never occurred for the $20, hence any in existence had to be switch inside the mint, ie obtained illegally.

 

My opinion is based on Roger Burdette’s testimony as reported in Coin World. They wrote several interesting articles on the trial.

http://www.coinworld.com/articles/1933-double-eagle-trial-roger-burdette-takes-/

 

Based on Coin World's reporting on the case, I would have to side with the government that these coins were stollen. Someone should post a pole on the verdict and see how the voting goes.

 

Message boards comming back to haunt ya..........

 

TYVM for posting the article. I enjoyed it.

I still defend the governments position and say his argument is tenuous at best. On a jury I would have voted the way the jury did. EVEN assuming that the 43 pieces were doubles, (it never says what they were), AND assuming that somehow in that huge pile they managed to pick out the 1933's, then what about the $10 in circulation today? It just stretches the bounds of possibility, and I would judge the government has a stronger case than the heirs, which is all that is required in a civil case. This is not "beyond a benefit of the doubt" like a criminal case, in which case that argument would make me vote no, but in a civil case its just who do you think has a stronger case for legal ownership, which I think the government has.

The problem, really, to me is why they hid them for so long. If they REALLY thought they had the right to own them, why wait until all potential witnesses are dead? Waiting so long to me is them simply wishing that all witnesses are dead to make their case easier, so to me this wait also strengthens the governments case that they are the true owners and the plaintiffs by hiding the coins are showing their guilt.

 

I wonder what the verdict will do to the value of the "legally owned' pieces out there? Because they re-claimed ownership and claim they cannot be public property, the pieces the government now owns are worth nothing more than bullion as they lost their market value in the process. Now that there are quite a few more known pieces with almost no value at all, wouldn't that deflate the value of the privately help examples?
Guy

 

This has been an interesting trial. For the most part, I agree with the verdict. Under the heading of "crime doesn't pay" Izzy Swift never made much money off these coins and had 8 of the illeged 20 coins seized as part of the 1933 gold confiscation law. The remaining 10 were found by his heirs in his safety deposit box wrapped up in a sandwich wrapper. It was property he couldn't sell. What I don't like about the trial is the demonization of the heirs on behalf of the government. They are the ones who sent them to the Treasury Department, who swore at that time that these coins did not exist, and had accounted for all 1933 Saint Gaudens. Apparently they were wrong. I would awarded a recovery fee to the family, even though their grandfather may have been a crook. The kids did the right thing, and unable to prove that a theft occured after two Secret Service investigations, the government did not.

http://www.coinworld.com/search/?q=10+1933+Trial&models=articles.article

 

Maybe they'll charge the government a few million dollars for storage fees of government property. You know they'd do that to you.

 

The gov't does shady things all the time, every gov't has done so forever. The coins could well have been hidden because they came into being right at the time of Gold confiscation.

I'd have sold them on the black market myself for maybe a million apiece. There is a market. You could steal the Moaning Lisa from the Louvre or whatever and fence it to some billionaire art collector for millions, said collector won't care it is stolen....he just wants it !

 

**But I thought the government had proof that they never sent 1933 Doubles to the exchange window. That was the basis of their case.**

I suspect most of us have read about most all federal agencies being unable to account for firearms, notebooks with sensitive information, thousands of computers gone missing, ad nauseam. Until they were audited these agencies reported the equipment was present and accounted for and had records to prove it. Most anybody with experience with government records would be very skeptical of eighty year old government records.
In this case the jury decided to give weight to hearsay and government "records" that are almost eighty years old. Clearly they do not understand government record keeping.

OK, I chalk this one up to the lawyers. To quote Lenny Bruce, RIP, In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

 

All of this could have been solved almost 80 years ago if the dealer really think he had a case. Numismatic coins were never part of the gold recall, so that is not an issue. I just call them like I see them, the original owner never tried to claim they were legally held and sue back when witnesses were still alive, he illegally exported at least one of them, and now his heirs, more than 70 years after the fact when all witnesses are dead, are trying to rewrite history. They even said he had some taken away from him as illegal, but hid the rest of these. He KNEW they were illegal, and his heirs should not benefit.

Their day in court should have been 70 years ago, and now trying to claim government records are faulty, and no witnesses are around, (due to thier own hiding of the coins), just seems disingenuous.

 

**he illegally exported at least one of them**

It appears the facts don't matter so much in this case.

I read in different sources the coin was LEGALLY exported, The federal government issued an federal export license for that "stolen" coin.

 

Strange story, but I think that the owner (US)
was right in getting them back.