Exactly How is old US Gold Being Repatriated? How much and what quality?
philographer
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I’ve seen many posts about pre-1933 gold being repatriated to the US in vast quantities over the past couple years.
First, where is the gold coming from...Europe, South America? Banks, central / reserve banks, collectors?
Exactly how is this happening? Are big US coin dealers (e.g. Heritage) canvassing these institutions to search their vaults, or are the banks just selling “bullion” to gold dealers and they in turn are selling it to US coin dealers? Are collectors walking into European banks and saying “I’m looking for old gold from the dark recesses of your vaults”? 🤑 Do the banks know the numismatic premiums on some of these coins, or do they consider them predominantly bullion?
Why now? After World War II, the run-up in gold in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, after the financial crisis and pop in gold prices—why is this gold coming out now?
How much old gold has come to the market in the past two years? 50,000 coins? 250,000 coins? And what denominations ... $20 and $10 or smaller ones too? Saints, Libs? And what grade: MS 64, or 60, or AU, EF. Baggy? Any particular dates becoming more “common”?
How much more is out there? Any insight or rumors into how much more is coming to market?
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Comments
I wanna know too.
It is highly unlikely that the "players" in this are going to release any details.
Great question(s). Could we get a spokesperson from G-20 to shed some light on this delicate/ precious matter ?
Just from reading various publications, dealers have been "mining" quality pieces from European banks for 50 years. It's only recently that the banks have been sending tons over (as in metric tons). I believe it has to do with changes in bank/investor reserve strategies. I think it's a random assortment of mostly $20's, kind of like buying US bags of $. The pics I've seen are of big trays of coins like massive rolls without wrappers.
Great questions by OP and I certainly would like some answers but I won’t hold my breath. The Fairmont Collection comes to mind.
This is nothing new, quantities might be larger but it has been going since at least the early or mid 1970s. John Dowd from Albany NY imported thousands of US gold coins from European banks. He repotedly was one of Leon Hendrickson's suppliers, see https://www.michigancoinclub.org/Articles48.html. I knew John and bought a substacial amount of coins from him, mostly foreign, but I have a few $20's and a Indian $10 that I assume he acquired in one of his purchases. I have no idea how he accomplished what he did but he was the "go to" guy in the Capital District if you wanted to buy gold.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
The OP's first assumption has to be validated before anything else matters.
Haven't thought of John Dowd in ages -
I knew him from my Euro travels in the
'70's. He was, from my West Coast upbringing,
a colorful East Coast character.
for PCGS. A 49+-Year PNG Member...A full numismatist since 1972, retired in 2022
To say the least..... the stories I could tell.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
There must be some very facinating stories that will never be told on this subject.
They are selling before the asteroid arrives.
https://www.rt.com/business/462703-golden-asteroid-everyone-billionaire/
Inquiring minds...….
One can look at the pop reports to get an idea on how slab-worthy specimens have come into the market each year since 1986. The PCGS/NGC pops of MS64 Saints is around 1 MILL pieces. That isn't hugely higher than I recall from around 2009-2011. The Heritage gold trading dept can probably give pretty good estimates on what comes in each year....if it weren't proprietary. In looking at their offerings and specials on a day to day basis they could be getting thousands or tens of thousands choice/gem Saints in each year. Then you have other companies getting in similar quantities. Larger deals behind the scene could dwarf those numbers. The numbers of circs and baggy UNCs is yet another addition. One would think the flow of these coins should be slowing. But I haven't followed it very closely the past few years. What has happened is frustrated gold holders giving up on slabbed generic gold during the 2014-2018 period. Which is half the reason the prices have been crushed the past 5 yrs.
I was buying slabbed MS64 $10 Libs for $1300 or so back in 1992-1993. Their prices are well under that now.
I bet the TPGs hate getting all those common twenties to slab.
I keep getting these emails from people in Nigeria and other places, wanting to give me millions of dollars... could be some of that is gold coins....Maybe I better reply to these people... I get an average of five offers a week...
Cheers, RickO
I have asked before, I'm not sure why no one is doing a statistical analysis of increases in population across the large gold coin series by date.
It seems to me it must be Switzerland. England was basically bled dry of gold by the US paying for war goods before LendLease. I can't imagine any bank where the Nazi's savaged a country had 3 grams of gold left. I will leave the question of Nazi accumulated gold untouched.
Spain was torn apart by Civil war in the 1930's, and Portugal was poor, period.
That basically leaves Sweden and Switzerland, maybe a smidge from Ireland.
Blow out gold coins due to recent gold price uptick? Is this gold peak?
A good book on the subject of Nazis and European gold is:
Chasing Gold: The Incredible Story of How the Nazis Stole Europe's Bullion by George M. Taber, published in 2014 by Pegasus Books.
Much of the gold moved around Europe then was in the form of pre-1930's gold coins from countries including the United States, Norway, France, Spain, and Portugal.
After World War II ended the Western Allies set up commissions to repatriate gold and loot stolen by the Nazis.
The Mysterious Egyptian Magic Coin
Coins in Movies
Coins on Television
My opinion is gold has a long way to go up-especially if just a few of the new socialist policies ever are enacted. With the gov't already bankrupt and hemorraging badly, I will keep at least some under the floorboards!
https://raregoldcoins.com/blog/2019/5/10/one-of-the-coolest-hoards-of-us-gold-coins-ever-seen-has-entered-the-market-and-you-probably-dont-even-know-about-it
Latin American Collection
So where are those bags of 1921 saints?....29....Anybody?
Apparently just more widgets & dreck saints.
My Saint Set
Nyet
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Not exactly pertinent, but your #1 jogged my memory.
Starting in 1990 and continuing for a few years, many very high-grade Mexican 8 Escudos came to market in Sotheby's London auctions (and perhaps a Sotheby's Switzerland auction). There was no particular announcement and nobody knew from where these came. But they had a MAJOR impact on the population of high-grade 8 Escudos.
Theories were that they came from a Central or South American bank holding, but I don't believe it's ever been determined the source of these. They are colloquially known as the Sotheby's Gold Hoard Sales and there are maybe 8-10 of them in all.
Those dealers who knew about these sales at the time did very well!
I have a Chihuahua 1866-FP 8E in AU58 that came from this hoard. Very rare coin and perhaps the finest known.
From what I heard; the new banking regulations in Europe will only allow a small percentage of banks' large gold bullion reserves to be used to comply with compulsory financial stress tests. This has prompted a prolonged sell off.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this statement but I'm posting it anyway for the sake of discussion.
I did personally hear it from a bank compliance officer.
Great write up.
A lot of mistakes and mistunderstandings in this article - sensationalizing for the public. Lots of Au and Pt to mine on the moon (for example), LOL clueless.........
Best, SH
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+1
If there truly has been a massive influx of pre 1933 gold in recent years, would that not be at least part of the reason why generic gold is trading at very low premiums?
Let's answer the questions that we can...
Constantly flowing from Europe. The Fairmont deal is coming from Canada, but word has it it came from Central America originally. There's a fabled El Salvador deal from the 1970s and 80s that is well-remembered, so it checks out.
There are many dealers that do this. Heritage is clearly one of the larger due to their network of employees there, but there are numerous other smaller operations that are wholesale-based and do a TON of the heavy lifting. OF course, you can't get to these banks and what they have without relationships that go up to the top...So, it's not retail based at all.
It's been going on for years. Some big deals are becoming more publicized now, but it's easier to physically move the stuff now (though probably harder on the legal ramifications).
Quality is not the hallmark of these deals in general. There is the occasional rare piece, but the quantity is certainly what is remembered. Mostly $10s and $20s with some smaller denominations. Lots of $20 Libs and Saints though.
Who knows...most of the major operators are very quiet as to how much they bring in, but there's a TON that is on the bench right now waiting for premiums to rise...