Posted on 08/26/2005 2:50:46 PM PDT by RoyalsFan
NEW YORK (AFP) - The American 20-dollar 1933 "double eagle" is one of the rarest and most valuable coins in the world. Joan Langbord of Philadelphia found 10 of them, and now the US government has taken them away.
Compounding Langbord's sense of loss -- a double eagle auctioned in 2002 sold for a world-record 7.6 million dollars -- is the fact that it was her own decision to inform the government of her discovery that led to their confiscation.
The 10 coins were hidden for decades in the possessions of Langbord's father, Israel Switt, who ran an antique jewelry store in Philadelphia before his death in 1990.
After uncovering the trove, Langbord turned the coins over to the US Mint for authentication. The Mint happily complied, confirmed they were genuine and promptly refused to give them back.
The double eagles were taken from the Mint "in an unlawful manner 70 years ago," the Mint's acting director, David Lebryk, said in a statement.
"They are, and always have been, public property belonging to the United States," Lebryk said.
The complexity of the case, which Langbord is planning to take to court, stems from the double eagles' unique history.
A total of 445,500 double eagles were minted in 1933, but then-president Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard in the same year and the coins never went into circulation.
All were ordered melted down into gold bars but, in the style of a page-turning thriller, a small number of specimens were known to have "escaped" into private hands.
As they had never been officially issued as US coinage, they could not be legally owned, and nine were seized by, or turned in to, the US Secret Service in the 1940s and '50s. All were destroyed.
A 10th specimen was seized by the Secret Service in 1996, when a dealer tried to sell it to some undercover agents.
Following a legal settlement, that coin was retroactively "issued" and auctioned at Sotheby's in New York City in 2002 for 7.6 million dollars -- still the highest price ever paid for a single coin.
"At the time, ... the Mint declared that it would not monetize or sell future 1933 double eagles that might be recovered," Lebryk said, explaining why Langbord's discovery had been confiscated.
The 10 coins are currently being held at the US bullion depository at Fort Knox, and Lebryk said the government was looking at the possibility of having them exhibited as "historical artifacts."
Langbord's lawyer Barry Berke told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she intended to sue for the return of the coins, on the grounds that Mint officials had no way of showing that they were stolen or subject to forfeiture.
In the meantime, Langbord is offering no details of how the coins may have come to be in her father's possession or when exactly she found them.
"Until this is resolved, there is nothing I can say," she told the Inquirer.
According to the newspaper, Switt, who started his business in 1920, was known to trade heavily in gold and had cultivated a relationship with people who worked at the Mint.
Lesson: Don't ask, don't tell.
Private property rights went out the window last month anyways.
Never forget the Golden Rule. Those with the gold make the rules.
Bottom line: stolen property doesn't become legitimate through inheritance.
They were not private property, they were stolen property.
It's a different article, read it.
Escaped = stolen. If she's so stupid as to show them to the Mint, from where they were originally stolen, she deserves to have them taken.
If only she had known what would happen, she could have melted them down or simply hammered them flat. IMHO, the government should at least compensate her for the amount of the gold.
So true. An elementary lesson in Property 101 in Law School. That's also why descendants of Holocaust victims are suing to get back artwork the Nazis stole from them that then ended up in the hands of questionable art dealers and wealthy collectors.
She should have taken them out of the country for resale, where the mint couldn't snatch them so easily.
She should have just shown the Mint ONE coin to see what would happen. Ten surely required action by the Feds...they couldn't have someone who was gonna drain the nation's bank account asking for her $$$$.
Statute of Limitations?
"She should have taken them out of the country for resale, where the mint couldn't snatch them so easily."
Are you a fence?
"Statute of Limitations?"
Doesn't change the fact that the property is stolen.
Good PR for government if they let her keep one of the coins as a reward for returning the other stolen/lost coins. That way both parties can leave happy.
LOL
With the exception of hundreds of years of American common law, and more than a thousand years of English common law before that.
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