Many of you most probably still remember the 1933 Double Eagles, the most expensive coin before The Neil/Carter/Contrusi 1794 flowing hair dollar. A court battle between the heirs to a renowned Philadelphia jeweler, Israel Switt and the US government had been going on for the ownership of 10 rare gold coins from 1933 worth an estimated $75 million. Government says that its were stolen because the coins never authorized for circulation.
According to AFP, the trial before US District Judge Legrome Davis began last Thursday, and is expected to last two weeks. The descendants of Israel Switt say, the government cannot prove the coins were stolen and nobody knows exactly how their father came to possess the coins. Court documents filed in the case include tales of international intrigue, US economic history, and as the jury heard Friday, the minutiae of the accounting procedures at the US Mint over seven decades ago.
1933 Double eagles were minted on 15 March 1933, a week after President Franklin Roosevelt, ordered the US Treasury to halt the release of all gold. In 1937, all the coins were destroyed by the Treasury and melt them into gold bars. Only two of the coins survived as part of the official US coin collection at the Smithsonian Institution.
But 10 of the coins surfaced in the 1940's. Over the next decade, the US Secret Service tracked down nine of them and destroyed them. All of the owners said they bought them from Switt, or from someone who bought them from Switt, according to court documents. Switt was twice investigated for illegally possessing gold coins in the 1930s and 1940s. He surrendered many of the coins, but was never prosecuted because the statute of limitations had run out, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero said to Associated Press.
The tenth 1933 Double Eagle, became the personal collection of Egypt's King Farouk in the 1940's, he received permission from the US government to ship the coin overseas. In 1954, the coin turned up at an auction in Cairo, during a sale of the deposed king's coin collection. Upon learning of the 1933 Double Eagle, the US government requested that it not be sold. The coin disappeared, only to turn up in the 1990s in the possession of British collector Stephen Fenton, who was arrested in New York City after trying to sell the coin to undercover US Secret Service agents. The government and Fenton later consented to its sale at auction on 30 july 2002 for $7.59 million and split the proceeds with the owner.
In 2004, Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, told officials at the US Treasury that she had found 10 more 1933 Double Eagles in a safe deposit box.She asked the Treasury Department to authenticate them. The government instead seized them, but the federal judge later ordered officials to defend the forfeiture at trial. The coins are being kept at Fort Knox.
The government argues that the safety box was not rented until six years after Switt died in 1990. Government lawyers say that 10 other "double eagles" that surfaced in the 20th century can all be traced to Switt. Prosecutors believe Switt and a corrupt cashier at the Mint had a hand in the breach. The Langbords had opened their deposit box the day before the London dealer's Farouk coin was seized in 1996, Romero said. The family later offered a similar 50-50 split with the U.S. to settle the case, but the government rejected it on grounds the family cannot legitimize their ownership of the coins, given Switt's history.
Lawyers for Langbord and her two sons Roy and David, argue in court documents that having a theory as to how the coins left the mint isn't enough. The government must prove the coins were stolen. They argue that in the 1930s, it was common and even permissible for employees of the mint to replace old coins with new ones of equal value.
Source: AFP & Associated Press
