The monetization of coins has been the center of legal attention for about a decade because of one particular coin: the 1933 Saint-Gaudens gold $20 double eagle.
Mint officials have long claimed that the entire 1933 production of 445,500 double eagles was never officially issued through accepted channels or monetized, therefore no one could have legal title to such a coin. The $20 double eagles were struck just as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had ordered an end to the production of gold coins and ordered all gold coins withdrawn from circulation.
|
Click on image to enlarge
|
|
NEARLY 70 YEARS passed before this 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle was monetized. When a buyer paid $7.59 million for the coin at auction in 2002, he had to pay an additional $20 for the face value of the coin as it became officially monetized. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
|
The Mint held that position even as it acknowledged that a few 1933 Indian Head gold $10 eagles, struck a little earlier than the 1933 double eagles, were legally issued as money before FDR's executive order was issued. The Mint held the 1933 double eagles for about four years before all of the pieces were melted except for two presented to the Smithsonian Institution (without the pieces being monetized). As far as the Mint knew from 1937 to 1944, the two coins at the Smithsonian were the sole survivors.
However, 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagles had been traded in the coin collecting marketplace since February 1937. On Feb. 29, 1944, Treasury officials granted an export license for one of the 1933 double eagles in the marketplace that had been sold to King Farouk of Egypt, a collector of coins, without thoroughly checking Mint records.
The error became apparent less than a month later after another example cataloged for public auction in March was brought to the Mint's attention. A more thorough study of the records revealed that the coins had not been issued.
The Secret Service tracked down nine pieces in the marketplace and confiscated them (but not the Farouk coin, which was already abroad); all of the confiscated pieces were eventually destroyed.
A sting operation in New York City in 1996 resulted in the recovery of yet another example of the 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle. After a protracted legal battle, shortly before the case was to go to trial, the government announced an out-of-court settlement that called for the government to monetize the coin and sell it at auction, splitting the proceeds with the coin dealer who had possession of the coin when it was seized.
The coin brought $7.59 million on July 30, 2002. The buyer had to turn over an additional $20 when Mint officials legally monetized the coin.
Ten more examples have since surfaced, and are currently in Mint custody. The individuals holding the pieces until 2004 have since filed suit against the government for their return.
