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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 26061313, member: 4626&quot;]Interestingly enough when the Treasury department tried to seize the King Farouk double eagle, the argument made that it should be legal to own was that Farouk had declared it on his customs form when he wanted to take it to Egypt, and the customs agent, a US government employee, signed it, suggesting that the US government endorsed that coin as legal to own.</p><p><br /></p><p>The treasury department didn&#039;t want to set a precedent if they lost in court (and there was a very good chance they would have), so they settled, basically saying they could auction the coin, the treasury department keeps half the proceeds of the auction, and then the owner pays the treasury department $20 and they declare it officially monetized and legal to privately own.&nbsp; They wanted to retain the status as being the only authority that could declare US coins monetized and legal to privately own.</p><p><br /></p><p>Side note, the treasury&#039;s stance on the 1913 Liberty head nickels is that since there&#039;s no official record of them being authorized to be produced, they&#039;re not truly US coins as far as they&#039;re concerned so they don&#039;t have the authority to declare them legal or illegal to own.&nbsp; (Essentially their official position is they have no official position.)</p><p><br /></p><p>I wonder what would happen if anyone found a 1964 peace dollar in their basement.&nbsp; It&#039;s known some were made, and they were all supposed to be destroyed... but all of the 1933 double eagles were supposed to be destroyed too.&nbsp; Maybe someone&#039;s hiding one until they can come up with a good legal argument as to why they should be legally able to keep it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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