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The “Mystery” of the 1932 $10 Gold Piece
BillJones
Posts: 33,648 ✭✭✭✭✭
Recently I added this 1932 $10 gold piece to my collection. There is nothing special about it. It’s in a PCGS MS-63 holder, and it is nice looking for the grade.
I find this coin intriguing because it was made during the depths of the Great Depression when $10 would have looked like a fortune to many people. At the same time it is the only U.S. gold coin that was minted in the 1930s that is common and cheap enough that I can own it. All of the other pieces cost many thousands of dollars. In fact this coin is the most common date in the $10 Indian series, and it is among the most common of all U.S. gold coins.
I have a number of questions about this coin for which I have not been able to find any answers. I imagine that few people who are alive today could answer them, but perhaps it would be fun for us to speculate about these questions:
First, why did the mint produce a record 4,463,000, 1932 gold eagles when the economy was barely alive and the demand for coins was very low? In the 1932 the mint system produced only cents, quarters, $10 gold pieces and $20 gold pieces. What prompted such a high mintage of $10 gold coins?
Second, the mint struck 1,101,750, 1932 double eagles, but virtually all of those pieces were melted. Who or what company saved the 1932 eagles from the melting pot, and why did they do it? Why weren’t most of the eagles in banks or Treasury vaults where they would have been subject to melting? Were these coins stored in European banks, which would become the source of many U.S. gold coins in later years, or did a domestic concern quietly hold them?
I’d lover to hear your speculations on this subject.
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
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I firmly believe in numismatics as the world's greatest hobby, but recognize that this is a luxury and without collectors, we can all spend/melt our collections/inventories.
eBaystore
09/07/2006
I suspect the very high mintage relates to pressures on the international monetary system during that period, and the US increase in the price of gold the following year from about $ 20 to $ 35.
Looking forward to input from an economic historian.
My guess is that the some major firm needed these coins for some sort of foreign transaction. The coins were shipped overseas where they are saved from the Gold Surrender Order and the subsequent melt. If that theory were correct it would be interesting to find out who the company was and something about the deal.
Although the mintage of these coins was over 4 million, I doubt that more than a few hundred thousand of them still exist. There are a few double eagles, the 1924 and 1928 immediately come to mind, that might be more common than the 1932 eagle. As a result those double eagles sell for less than the 1932 eagle despite the fact that they contain twice as gold.
An earlier post mentioned a transaction with a South American country. I was not aware of that one, but during World War II the U.S. did pay gold to Saudi Arabia for oil. One of the outcomes of that was the so-called U.S. gold sovereigns which were minted at that time. It was illegal to own those coins in this country for a number of years until the restrictions were taken off of gold ownership in the mid 1970s, although the U.S. sovereigns did trade among collectors in the underground market.
I doubt that it was a single transaction that required the large number of eagles, but broader financial market conditions.
In September, 1931 Britain left the gold standard, thereby terminating conversion of pounds into gold. This increased the sense of crisis in the world financial markets, and dramatically increased the level of conversion of US dollars into gold, resulting in a flow of gold out of the US. The high mintage of eagles in 1932 is likely related to this outflow of gold.
The following year, Roosevelt increased the dollar price of gold, making it more expensive to convert dollars into gold.
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
I think you might be on to something here. It would be interesting to look at the gold export figures for the late 1920s and early '30s to see if there was a blip in the export of gold from the U.S. This could also explain why some dates of U.S. double eagles, like 1924 and 1928 are so common. Interestingly enough while those coins got out of the country, all of the other dates from 1929 to 1933 were not issued and ended up in the melting pot.
FEBRUARY 27, 1932: Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, which authorizes the sale of seven hundred and fifty million dollars worth of the government gold supply and allows the Federal Reserve system more leeway in discounting commercial paper.
Of course, next year a complete 180 happened. Oh, those tricky politicians.