Believe it or not, there’s a coin in the world so rare that you’ll never find one at Provident Metals: the 1933 Saint Gaudens Gold Double Eagle. These coins were minted the year that President Franklin Roosevelt issued a seizure of all gold coinage. The 145,000 Eagles that had been minted for the year were not yet in circulation, and they were all destroyed….all except a rare and mysterious few.
In 2002, Joan Langbord, the daughter of a late Philadelphia jeweler named Israel Swift, found 10 of these Double Eagles in a safety deposit box belonging to her father. When she took them to the government to be authenticated, they were deemed authentic and then seized.
Thus began a lawsuit that has carried on for over ten years now.
In 2011, the court determined that the gold seizure was warranted because Mint records showed that no Double Eagles ought to have been released to the public. Since they all should have been destroyed, the court decided that Swift’s Eagles must have been obtained illegally, possibly through a smuggler at the U.S. mint.
In the 1940’s, several St. Gaudens Eagles were found in circulation; their origins had also traced back to Swift. Swift told the government at that time that he didn’t know where exactly the coins had come from, that they had been traded in with large collections. All the coins found in circulation at that point were destroyed.
While the court agreed with the government’s rights to the coins during their 2011 ruling, the Court of Appeals overturned the decision this past April, and required the government to return the coins to Langbord and her sons.
In 2001, one of these Double Golden Eagle coins sold for $7.8 million dollars. Langbord’s coins will surely sell for at least a million dollars apiece, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Whether this coin case is truly closed remains to be seen; the U.S. Treasury may appeal the decision. So stay tuned to our blog!
While you won’t be able to get your hands on a St. Gaudens Double Eagle, you can still find plenty of pre-33 gold coins at Provident Metals to help you get your fill of history.
Who do you think is right in this case – Langbord or the court?
Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter.
This story seems fake, why would Langdord take these coins to the “government” to be authenticated? This story is not believable.
Believability of the story aside, you can’t “assume” illegal activity. The burden of proof is on the court… assuming the court, which is just another branch of government, isn’t corrupt. Clearly the coins belong to Langbord, not the gov’t. [However, in spite of ownership, a mandate to destroy all of the minted coins is still a mandate regardless of who owns them. Ah, the wondrous red tape of our legal system and the overreaching arm of gov’t trying to take from its citizens. 🙂 ]