What was it like when gold was illegal?

kiyote

What was still on the market? Was there a clear line between numismatic and non-numismatic gold? Was there a black market?

homerunhall

Prior to 1975, you could only buy Mexican 50 pesos (all dated 1947 or before,), other Mexican gold, British soverns, French 20 francs, Swiss 20 Francs and other coins dated before 1933. You could not buy Kruggerands, and there were no US Gold Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, Austrian Philharmonics, etc.

There was a big market in pre-1933 UC S gold coins, the big bullion sellers being $20 Saints and $20 Liberties. So you could get plenty of gold and there wasn't really a need for a black market. You just couldn't buy the later dated foreign bullion coins and you couldn't own gold bars.

David

BlindedByEgo

I remember when placer gold was being marketed right after the ban was lifted... The official price of gold, as I remember, was about $45.00 before it was allowed to "float"... Placer was selling at $100 to $120 per ounce, and my parents though that it was a ripoff, shady marketers going after the new "gold bugs". Funny, adjusted for inflation, $120 in the mid-70's is not too far off from $550 today, is it?

Conder101

The gold ban also lead to the production of most of the counterfeit pre-1933 US gold coins. It was a way to import gold into the country, and in the form of US coins the gold would bring significantly more than it could as bullion.

majorbigtime

Not different for collectors. It was kinda fun to have "forbidden fruit".

morgannut2

As a kid I remember seeing some gold coins a friends parents. It became interesting to the "gang" and it turned out almost everyone's parents had 5 or 10 gold coins--generally US $5's or $10's. I'd guess MORE people had gold in the 50's and 60's than now. Some ban!

ziggy29

<< <i>As a kid I remember seeing some gold coins a friends parents. It became interesting to the "gang" and it turned out almost everyone's parents had 5 or 10 gold coins--generally US $5's or $10's. I'd guess MORE people had gold in the 50's and 60's than now. Some ban! >>

Part of that is probably because of the price of gold being fixed artificially low. It was fixed at about $35 per ounce for thirty years until the late 1960s. Accounting for inflation, that means gold was historically cheap by the late 1960s. It's no wonder more people might have it then, for that reason alone.

Plus, more people back then remembered living through the Depression and appreciated having hard assets around.

morganbarber

Two points.
First, As a detectorist, the fact that gold was once illegal to own makes me very excited. Who knows how many people buried stashes in their yard.

Second, my father, who was a survivalist wacko used to buy a lot of gold. Much of the foreign coins were purposely only purchased if struck prior to a certain date. I forget the details, but he believed that when the government came for people's gold, that coins of a certain age would have to be exempted.

Conder101

During the ban ALL coins dated before 1933 were legal to own. Only some coins after that date were permitted and import licenses were required for them. What was confusing was that sometimes a coin would be permitted as a "rare and/or unusual" coin , and then the next time you applied for a license for the same coin it would be denied. The determination was made by a small group, possibly even one person and if he didn't like you you didn't get your license.

Many gold hoarders are of the opinion that if gold is ever called in again by the government the pree 1933's would be exempt because they were exempt under the earlier order. They don't seem to understand that a new order will stand on its own and the terms may be nothing like what they were before.

cladking

There was a recent article in Coinage that was very well done and reported extensively on
the man behind the ban. His name escapes me but is pretty familiar to those who were a-
round in those days.

I wanted to buy the '67 Canadian set with gold but it couldn't legally be brought into this coun-
try and the mint would not ship it. A lot seemed to get here anyway but most were probably
brought back by visitors.

There were a lot of US gold coin collectors in those days despite the fact they were well aware
that vast numbers of coins were sitting in European vaults.