Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer
They got the date wrong twice in the article, but editorial incompetence notwithstanding, this is a very odd story for a lot of reasons.
Feel free to elaborate.
“Coveted” 1933 Double Eagle Gold Coin Sells For Record $19.51 Million At Sotheby’s Auction
An extremely rare, uncirculated 1933 Double Eagle gold coin sold for a record $19.51 million at Sotbeby’s auction in New York on Tuesday.
Sotheby’s described the $20 coin designed by American sculptor Agustus Saint Gaudens as the last US gold coin ever made and intended for circulation, making it “one of the most coveted coins in the world.” The $19.51 million sale price blew past pre-sale estimates of between $10 and $15 million, breaking the record for the most expensive coin in the world which was previously set by a 1974 Flowing Hair silver dollar that went for $10 million in 2013, according to AFP.
The Double Eagle, which was never issued after US President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard in place since the 1830s, and issued Executive Order 6102 forbidding “the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates.”
More from AFP on the history of the coin:
The Double Eagle has an image of Lady Liberty on one side and an American eagle on the other.
The 1933 Double Eagles were the last American gold coins intended for circulation by the United States Mint but were never legally issued for use.
That year, President Roosevelt removed the United States from the gold standard in an effort to lift America’s battered economy out of the Great Depression.
All of the coins were ordered to be destroyed, apart from two which were given to the Smithsonian Institution.
However, in 1937, several of the coins appeared on the market, sparking a Secret Service investigation in 1944 that ruled that the coins had been stolen from the US government and were illegal to own.
Prior to the probe, one of the coins was purchased and mistakenly granted an export license, Sotheby’s said in its notes.
It ended up in the coin collection of King Farouk of Egypt. When Sotheby’s tried to auction the Double Eagle in 1954, the US Treasury successfully had it withdrawn.
The coin’s whereabouts were then unknown until 1996 when it was seized during a Secret Service sting at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
A five-year legal tussle ensued and it was decided that the coin could be privately owned. -AFP
Meanwhile, other Double Eagles which have surfaced have been ruled the property of the United States in various cases – including by the Supreme Court, making the coin bought on Tuesday the only 1933 Double Eagle allowed to be legally sold. It last changed hands in 2002 when designer Stuart Weitzman bought it for $7.59 million.
Fun fact; $20 invested in the Dow in 1933 would be worth $7,055 today.
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Heck of a answer Archaeo.
Guess who gets all the low number currency issues from the BEP? The cabal and their buddies. Low number is when the serial number is all zeros and then a one or a two, etc. on the end. Sit on them for years and they bring big money at auction.
Like John Wick, the cabal has been using gold all along . Real money for them, toilet paper for us.
The oddity is that the Feds didn’t confiscate it.
If you’re referencing the 1933 double eagle, there’s a lot of backstory. As far as I know, the Feds did confiscate it, in 1996….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_double_eagle#Farouk_Specimen
Correct but overturned in a court of law (back when you had real courts and not paid help)
Well done AP. A very nice review of the book “A history of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind” by Stephan M. Goodson.
I read something about the double eagle or another gold or silver coin not long ago. I believe there were one or two that were in private hands. The government was trying to take them from an estate. Claiming a relative that once worked at the mint had stolen them.
https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/roy-langbord-divulges-details-on-1933-double-eagles.html
An intriguing part of the story.
Bizarre.
money laundering
Silver coin of the/this/all realm/s is one Spanish Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest & charged up San Juan Hill Real – “Royal” – Mint Jellystone Park, Boo-Boo, cuz that’s where the Yogis of force & fraud, of “power” – corruption – say the cornucopic pic-I-nic basket of Tourettic tourists’ stuff is to be Artful Dodger pocket pic’d & nic’d. Pieces of Ate your lunch, your hearth & home, your ass. It is cartoon, it is Loony, & in gold it’s Doubloony.
(I drove thru some of TR’s nationalized parks last Fall, but his, & those domains eminent Legends only Fell further for the direct experience. Dunno if Jim Harrison wept, but I’m outta Tears for that Trail. Custer had flowing hair, the land of flowing milk & oozing honey had custard enough to go ‘round…but Del Gue knew the physics of cue ball English, in any language.)
Not your best work, but fwiw the trail of tears passes close by to my little piece of nowhere.
I liked it. But each day’s play is the best, for me, that day. Is how & why it works. Is the definition of “works,” as far as I’m concerned. But don’t hold breath waiting for that definition to show up in the OED.
Finished season 2 Yellowstone. Lots of parallels to Legends of the Fall. One of the sons, political Jaime, has been consumed by a need for approval; insatiable…for what was withheld in his particular formative days (takeaway close can push some buttons in, & then break them off). He gets one last chance in season 3. But the question still turns: one last chance to get father’s approval, or one last chance at the self-approval comporting correctly might afford? (Long odds against the latter: he’s a lawyer/politician, in a dynastic family.) Because the Dutton dynasty is by no means Tanager-clean, same as the Dynasty Diner it eats from, & Dutton dynasty is drowning, getting dirtier…that is what dynasties do. Nuclear families, spent fuel rods, meltdowns: “enriched” youreignium.
This bit is the missing part of the clip, along with “chickenshit,” that applies:
Coach: 13: 12 for the 3 mile. You satisfied?
Prefontaine: l’m satisfied l did the best l could on Saturday.
C: l think you could’ve gone 6 seconds better. The first quarter cost you.
P: How do you figure?
WL is a good flick about a great story. Incl the whole continuum-spectrum of “everybody gets what they get.” There was a “strong mother” aspect in the flick, too.
“I’d never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying. This was not the frailty of a man who is said to be “only human,” subject to a weakness or a vulnerability. This was a wave of sadness & loss that made me understand that I was a man expanded by grief….” ~ Zero K, DeLillo ~~ different motors, different fuels, different races run different ways ~~~ whole lotta seeming subjectivity buried within the objects, & the objectivity…so, collide-o-scope.
Speaking of the OED, another good flick:
Tracks (Smokey Robinson) & trails & vales of tears, everywhere.
Let’s not forget the mint can’t get silver for coins, etc. but the price stays the same.
Also this coin is probably just fake like all the old masters paintings are now.
Yes, please HF.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case involving ownership of 10 1933 Saint-Gaudens gold double eagles, thus apparently bringing to an end a decade-long legal battle over who gets to keep the coins.
The Supreme Court’s decision means that the coins will remain the property of the federal government and will not be returned to the Langbord family, which reportedly discovered the 10 coins in a family safe deposit box in 2003. The family — Joan Langbord and her sons, Roy and David — turned them over to the United States Mint in 2004 for authentication. Mint officials informed the family in 2005 that it was keeping the coins. A legal battle over ownership ensued, with both parties to the suit at different points being awarded the coins. The last court decision, made Aug. 1, 2016, by an appeals court, found that the government repossessed its own property and in doing so, asserted its ownership rights to the coins.5555555555555555555555555556
As Steve Roach reported in the April 17 issue of Coin World, the case had moved beyond the 10 coins that were allegedly found by Joan Langbord in her family’s safe deposit box in 2003 and had grown to revolve around two key questions with broad implications. “The first question is whether, when the government seizes property from private citizens and intends to retain it indefinitely, it can avoid the procedures, deadlines and penalties set forth in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 by merely asserting that the property was stolen from the government and declaring that it has no intention of seeking forfeiture. The second question is whether the government can avoid CAFRA’s protections by strategically waiting for years and then filing a declaratory judgment claim that seeks essentially the same relief as is barred by CAFRA,” Roach reported.
The government has held since at least 1944 that 1933 double eagles are illegal to own, citing executive orders by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 that halted the release of gold coins from government inventories, among other provisions. The government contends that Roosevelt’s orders meant no 1933 double eagles could have been released legally (other than two presented at the Smithsonian Institution) and that any surviving examples in private hands could only have been obtained illegally.
However, at least 10 of the 1933 double eagles entered the marketplace in the 1930s and 1940s, all or most originating in the hands of Israel Switt, a Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer, and father of Joan Langbord. Examples of the 1933 double eagle were sold openly in the marketplace for years, even being advertised in hobby publications, with no government interference.
In 1944, however, officials made two contradictory decisions in short order that forever changed how the coins were perceived. The first decision was to grant Egypt an export license for one of the coins for the collection of King Farouk; officials determined that the coin fit the standards that permitted some rare gold coins to be privately owned. Shortly thereafter, another example of the coin was scheduled to appear in an auction by Stack’s. A journalist covering the auction queried the Mint on why the 1933 double eagle was considered rare, as stated by Stack’s; Mint officials who looked more deeply into the records determined that none of the coins had been released to the public through normal channels.
An ensuing investigation by the Secret Service led to Switt, who acknowledged having sold 10 of the coins, including the piece that King Farouk eventually acquired. Agents tracked down the nine remaining coins over a period of years, and all were confiscated and eventually melted. Egypt refused to return the Farouk coin and when the Farouk Collection was sold at auction in 1954, the 1933 double eagle was removed from the sale at the request of the U.S. government; the coin then disappeared from public view.
A coin alleged to be the Farouk example resurfaced in 1996 and was seized by U.S. authorities. A long legal battle ended when the government and the dealer claiming ownership of the coin reached an agreement that permitted the coin to be sold at auction with the two parties splitting the proceeds. The coin sold for $7.59 million in a July 2002 auction. Officials have never disclosed why they agreed to allow the coin to be sold, and they continue to hold that no other examples can be owned.
Nonetheless, in addition to the two coins held by the Smithsonian, the 10 Langbord coins held by the Mint, and the coin owned by an unnamed party since its purchase in the 2002 auction, at least one other 1933 double eagle is known to be held in an unnamed collection. It is also uncertain whether the coin sold in 2002 truly is the Farouk coin or whether it is another piece with an unpublished pedigree.
What will now happen to the 10 double eagles currently being held at the Mint’s Fort Knox Gold Bullion Depository? Mint officials have said the coins will not be melted (as were the pieces that were confiscated from collectors and dealers more than 60 years ago). Beyond that, though, little has been revealed publicly about the future of the coins.
Word salad, of which I’be been accused of serving, never hurt anybody. But word Saladins….
Property “takings”: eminent domain, condemnation, civil asset forfeiture.
First 2 episodes of Yellowstone, it was about preventing “gentrification” “progress” around the ranch, which would lead to ambient property tax rates that could not be met, & the ranch thus stolen by that subterfuge.
In season 3, Goldman & other NY/CA types are making deals with the gov to just ED the ranch/ers, because the airport & ski resort & “Park City” they will build will gin up more higher tax base than the ranchers now pay.
“Greater good” utilitarianism. Cult of numerologists. Democratic “redistribution.”
Magic Words, backed by a much larger dictionary of sticks & stones.
There is a virus. Agent Smith spoke of it.
I have 9 of these from 1925- 1928 . They where my Grandfathers + also his British sovereigns and half sovereigns
Back then if you traveled in Asia you either had a letter of credit to exchange for local currency at a bank or these coins to do any business. Now we print cards with fake amounts attached. Mine are not worth this but they would buy you a life if needed. This was real money, accepted everywhere because Britain and the US where respected
I’ve read the article and think the “oddity” that strikes me most is that the coin “last changed hands in 2002 when designer Stuart Weitzman bought it for $7.59 million” when the melt value is around $7 thousand.