Family tries to reclaim fugitive gold coins
From the NYT:
Inside the box, opened in 2003, he found an incredibly rare coin, wrapped in a delicate paper sleeve. It was a gold $20 piece with Lady Liberty on one side, a bald eagle flying across the other and, at Liberty’s left, the four digits that made it so valuable: 1933.The famous “double eagles” from that year were never officially released by the government. Only a few had ever made their way out of federal vaults, and only one had ever been sold publicly, in 2002. The price: $7.6 million.
And there were nine more of them in the safe-deposit box.
The family turned the coins over to the government for authentication, but Washington held onto them, claiming they never should have been held by the public. Now the family is trying to get a judge's order to release them.
Here is my review from The Sun from five years ago of David Tripp's "Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle." Tripp knew there were other, unaccounted-for 1933 coins, but he couldn't find where they were. Now we know. The review, from the Sept. 5, 2004 edition of The Sun:
On March 6, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard, banned new gold coins and condemned to the melting pot nearly a half-million $20 gold pieces struck with a 1933 date but not issued.A few escaped. David Tripp tracks the fugitives across six decades and several continents, through a king's palace and a Secret Service sting operation and into bright day at a Sotheby's auction two years ago.
It is an evocative trip. Per-haps no other metallurgical product emits the symbolic and informational wattage of coins. The little hunks cater to greed, aestheticism, patriotism and probably a few other vices. What we know about Hellenic South Asia and some other ancient cultures is based almost solely on numismatic evidence.
Coins betray 20th-century American secrets, as well. No one could imagine the events of 1933 happening today.
To combat a worsening Depression and plunging prices, Roosevelt and Congress not only stopped minting gold but called on the country to surrender privately held gold in exchange for government paper. The idea was to stabilize the money supply by reversing overseas gold flight.
In a way that will horrify the libertarian and thrill the communitarian, Americans obeyed, trading tons of lustrous yellow metal for Roosevelt's IOUs, for the good of the nation. Eventually it became illegal for people to own almost any kind of gold.
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