The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: PegLeg45 on July 07, 2011, 06:12:58 PM
-
Thought this was an interesting "Us vs Them" story:
Family fights government over rare ‘Double Eagle’ gold coins
A jeweler's heirs are fighting the United States government for the right to keep a batch of rare and valuable "Double Eagle" $20 coins that date back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's just the latest coin controversy to make headlines.
Philadelphian Joan Langbord and her sons say they found the 10 coins in 2003 in a bank deposit box kept by Langbord's father, Israel Switt, a jeweler who died in 1990. But when they tried to have the haul authenticated by the U.S. Treasury, the feds, um, flipped.
They said the coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint back in 1933, and are the government's property. The Treasury Department seized the coins, and locked them away at Fort Knox. The court battle is set to kick off this week.
The rare coins (pictured), first struck in 1850, show a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. One such coin recently sold at auction for $7.6 million, meaning the Langbords' trove could be worth as much as $80 million.
The coins are part of a batch that were struck but then melted down after President Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933, during the Great Depression. Two were given to the Smithsonian Institution*, but a few more mysteriously escaped.
The government has long believed that Switt schemed with a corrupt cashier at the Mint to swipe the coins. They note that the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death, and that the family never paid inheritance tax on the coins.
A lawyer for the Langbords counters that the coins could have left the Mint legally since it was permissible to swap gold coins for gold bullion.
----------
More at link:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/family-fights-government-over-rare-double-eagle-gold-151853030.html
It'll be interesting to see how it pans out, argument-wise.
-
FTA :
"the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death,"
They are going to get shafted even though the statute of limitations has long expired.
-
FTA :
"the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death,"
They are going to get shafted even though the statute of limitations has long expired.
Doesn't mean a whole lot. Typically deposit boxes are closed out after someone's death. In this case, the stuff could have been boxed when the original space was released, and then moved to another deposit box without looking.
Should have been included in the estate inventory though, but things happen. But you're right, they will never see the coins or the money for them again.
FYI - do not call the Feds in on anything. They are not there to help you. ;D
-
Indeed.Why did these idiots involve the feds to begin with? If they'd kept their mouths shut they'd be millionaires. If they knew there were legal issues state side, sell the damn things via Christies in London and have the proceeds deposited in the Caymans. Yeah, you'll lose 50%, but half of $80 million looks a lot like $40 million. 8) WTH were they thinking? Repeat after me: The government is not your friend! Todays lesson brought to you by the Reason Foundation.
FQ13
-
I figure that the coins were put in the new box by the heirs under the assumption of "oh, he had some old $20 gold pieces".
It wasn't until later they found out what they were worth, if they ever did before taking them to the Feds for appraisal.
But the Govt. will slant it and present it as a intentional scheme to defraud the Govt.
-
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Ronald Reagan
Second runner up,....
"Please, as a last resort, get to the Superdome"
Mayor Ray Nagan...(also from gov't)...
-
The story continues..............a long, but interesting read......... if you are into coin collecting and such:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/113398/double-eagle-gold-coins-mystery-businessweek
----------------------------snip---------------------------
Around this time, a 41-year-old Philadelphia jeweler named Israel Switt offered several 1933 Double Eagles to some of the most prominent coin dealers and collectors of the day, according to Secret Service documents since made public. Switt sold one, now Exhibit 18E, to a Texas dealer who then sold it to King Farouk of Egypt for $1,575. A royal representative in the U.S. requested an export license for the coin and, unbeknownst to the Secret Service, the Secretary of the Treasury issued one on Feb. 29, 1944.
That same month, Stack's, the rare coin dealer in New York, announced an auction for another Double Eagle. It wasn't until early March, though, that the Secret Service heard about the sale and realized that some of the coins had been taken out of the Mint. King Farouk's Double Eagle had already been delivered to him in Cairo by diplomatic pouch. Agents confiscated the second coin before Stack's could sell it and launched the investigation that continues today. "The government has been fanatical about seizing and destroying these coins," says Robert W. Hoge, curator of North American coins and currency at the American Numismatic Society. "They're famous because the government has been seizing them since the 1940s."
The first phase of the Secret Service investigation would trace 10 1933 Double Eagles to Switt, a reclusive jeweler and coin dealer who, like so many in this story, believed the coins possessed talismanic powers. His only child, Joan Langbord, who worked with him until his death in 1990 at age 95, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that her father "could be obnoxious or irascible. If he didn't like you, he'd throw you out." His business philosophy, she said, was that "the customer was never right; he was always right."
"You must understand the Philadelphia thing," says Brahin. "I'm from there, so I can say this: The dealers were crafty, they would do anything to get an edge. If you don't know that, you don't have the right amount of cynicism to analyze the story."
In Switt's statement to the agents, his only official pronouncement about the coins, he said that he didn't have any records of where, when, or how he had obtained the Double Eagles. But he claimed that he did not buy them from any employees of the Mint.
Nonetheless, after a 10-month investigation, the Secret Service concluded that it was more likely than not that Switt was the fence for a corrupt Mint cashier. In 1945, the Justice Dept. wanted to press charges, but by then the statute of limitations had run out.
Seven years later, in 1952, King Farouk was deposed and sent into exile in Monaco. The generals leading the new Republic of Egypt decided to auction off his belongings, including his renowned gold coin collection. It contained 8,500 pieces; one was the 1933 Double Eagle. Sotheby's won the right to hold the auction in Cairo in February 1954. As soon as U.S. Treasury officials saw the catalog for the Palace Collection of Egypt, as it was called, they asked the Egyptians to pull the coin from the auction and return it to Washington. At the last minute, the Double Eagle in Lot 185 was withdrawn. Then it disappeared.
-------------------------snip---------------------------
-
Question #1, and the main question I would want my attorney asking in court: Where are the records that there has been an on going case on these missing coins, and where are the notifications that have gone out to gold dealers, pawn shops and rare coin dealers as well as the ads and articles in coin collecting magazines that warn of these illegal coins?
Has this truly been a case, or is it a created case once these coins surfaced? The U.S. Mint does not just lose things, and there is nothing that goes out their doors without being known. Even if these coins were stolen the shortage would be recorded and on record, and there would be a paper trail going all the way back to the inventory where the loss was found.