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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 26061489, member: 4626&quot;]It&#039;s not so much they were arguing Customs could monetize a coin.&nbsp; Their argument was: King Farouk was basically asking permission to take the coin out of the country, and a US government official signed the declaration form without raising any objections, effectively giving him permission to do so, which in effect was the US government saying it was legal for a private individual to won the coin.&nbsp; Would that argument have convinced a jury?&nbsp; It might have... and the US Treasury department didn&#039;t want to take that chance, because of the precedent it would have set, so they chose to settle out of court as a compromise.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>As to the 1913 Liberty Head nickels (note there&#039;s only 5, not 8, known to exist):&nbsp; It was pretty clear whoever minted them wasn&#039;t officially directed to do so, and while I can&#039;t prove what their motives were, I highly doubt they were entirely innocent; there&#039;s no way they thought that what they were doing was legal.&nbsp; Nobody who had the access necessary to do that would have reasonably believed that.&nbsp; But well, no proof as to who did it exactly, and obviously the statue of limitations has long since expired lol (that and the culprit is likely no longer alive).&nbsp; But Treasury just chooses to not acknowledge them as official issues of the US Mint, and thus they take no official stance about the legality of owning them.&nbsp; (And whatever is not illegal, is legal.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Who did it and why can really only be guessed at, and may never be conclusively proven (though there are a few strong suspects).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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