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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;NorthKorea, post: 1982442, member: 29643&quot;]There are some considerations that need to be made with the coin in question. According to the CoinWorld article, the Mint found no records authorizing the production of the aluminum cents at the Denver facility. The die setter who claimed to have made &quot;10-12&quot; of the aluminum cents at Denver said that the foreman told him to strike them. After striking, the coins and remaining planchets were given to the foreman, who died in 1988.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem lies in the fact that most of the &quot;players&quot; are deceased, leaving one man (Benito Martinez, the die setter) as the sole witness to attest to the striking of the coins. With no Mint records of the coins, either as issues nor test/pattern coins, the US Mint is claiming that the property is essentially stolen.</p><p><br /></p><p>Any argument that the Mint doesn&#039;t have right to custody, due to the lack of records of production, are without merit, since the various scenarios boil out to either:</p><p><br /></p><p>1) The coins were struck on planchets that were never authorized for Denver Mint cents.</p><p>OR</p><p>2) The coins are counterfeit.</p><p><br /></p><p>In either case, the US Mint has a right to request a return of the coins, as neither case allows for the legal possession of the coins. Now, if it turns out the Mint lost the records over time, that&#039;s unfortunate, but without documentation of custody for the coins, the assumption is they weren&#039;t authorized.</p><p><br /></p><p>The difference between the 1974-d and Toven cents are that the Mint did make the Toven cent. It&#039;s not really logical to argue precedent for ownership of the Denver cent based upon the Toven cent, since the Mint could simply turn around and tell the Toven family to return the coin or allow for the custodial transfer of ownership from the member of Congress.</p><p><br /></p><p>All of that said, I don&#039;t think the Toven cent is legal to own, either. By his own admission, Toven attempted to return a dime to the member of Congress. The Congressperson then said something to the effect of &quot;It&#039;s okay. You can keep it.&quot; Later, Toven realized that the &quot;dime&quot; was actually a penny and decided to stash it away, since it might be quite valuable. The moment that Toven realized it was possibly a valuable cent and not an ordinary dime, he <i>should</i> have gone back to the member of Congress and offered to return it a second time. After all, ownership of an ordinary dime was transferred/withdrawn, not ownership of a cent that was supposed to be reviewed and returned to the US Mint.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back to the Denver cent, without documentation of an official order to strike the coins, the die setter effectively made unauthorized coins at the Mint. Since he claimed to be following the orders of a deceased foreman, reasonable doubt would be cast upon his guilt of counterfeiting. After all, if he was told by his boss to do it, he wouldn&#039;t have a lot of reason to be suspicious of the coins, which he assumed were returned to the Mint&#039;s HQ.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, without record of the coins being minted officially, that leaves at least three potential individuals who authorized the striking of the coins without official documentation from the Mint:</p><p><br /></p><p>1) Harry Bobay, Martinez&#039;s foreman at the Denver facility.</p><p>2) Harry Edmond Lawrence, the assistant/deputy superintendent of the Denver facility.</p><p>3) The superintendent of the Denver facility.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem with this is that all three are deceased, leaving no one to verify the authority to strike the coins, nor what happened to the coins &amp; planchets after they were struck.</p><p><br /></p><p>The assumption is that the US government owns the coins unless proof of transfer of custody exists.</p><p><br /></p><p>This argument holds due to the rarity of the issue. If it&#039;s one of &quot;10-12&quot; that were struck, the die setter says that he gave them to his foreman, and there&#039;s no one alive to counter that statement, the assumption is that all examples are either property of the US Government or were destroyed by the Government. This isn&#039;t changed by the fact that the Government has sold pattern coins in the past, released errors into circulation, allowed release of test nickels, sold gold coins that later had counterfeit versions stolen, etc. The title held by the Government remains intact.</p><p><br /></p><p>Think of it this way:</p><p><br /></p><p>A famous painter dies at a relatively young age, and is known to have created 20 masterworks in their lifetime, all of which are in museums. For whatever reason, the artist liked to paint on the back of Someone comes along with a painting that looks similar in stroke and style to said painter and claims that it was gifted to their grandmother, who was a young lover of the artist, and passed down through their family. The family of the artist questions the legality of the painting, citing that all 20 known pieces that the artist made are on loan to museums worldwide, and the artist never told anyone in the family that they gave away one of their creations.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, while the story of the gift is somewhat romantic, it is still, without some documentation of transfer to establish a custodial start to provenance, a story. When the item goes up for auction, it might still receive a high price (if any auction house were to allow the consignment), even with the questions of origin, but market value has no bearing on legality of the piece itself.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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