Options
The Ukiah Daily Journal: "Judicial Follies: The Most Valuable Coin"
Goldbully
Posts: 16,864 ✭✭✭✭✭
I thought this was a very interesting article about the beautiful St Gaudens Double Eagle.
Judicial Follies: The Most Valuable Coinby Frank Zotter Jr.
Updated: 11/30/2009 08:41:53 AM PST
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the man who was undoubtedly the most famous artist in America at that time, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to design new coins for the United States. Roosevelt, a scholar and student of antiquity, asked Saint-Gaudens to design coins that recalled the glory of Greece and the Republic of Rome.
Saint-Gaudens was already ill with the cancer that would eventually take his life, but he designed one $20 gold piece (also known as a "double eagle") that by common consensus is the most beautiful coin ever minted by the United States government. The face of the coin depicts the figure of Lady Liberty, a shield in one hand, taking the last step astride a mountaintop; the reverse shows a large eagle in flight above a radiant rising sun.
Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, the year that the U.S. began minting his new double eagle design, and production of the coins proceeded for the next quarter century. But in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, a different President Roosevelt - Franklin Roosevelt - got the authority from Congress to recall all gold coins in private hands.
The country was suffering from a rare economic condition at the time - deflation; with each passing month, as economic activity declined, prices fell. Roosevelt hoped that by withdrawing gold from circulation, the effect of "cheapening" the money would help to stop the rising value of the money in circulation, and instead would help to prop up the prices of goods and services.
Congress enacted severe penalties for citizens who held onto gold, and although there was an exception for coin collectors, many citizens were spurred into patriotic action and turned in gold bullion and coins. The Government issued paper money that was not redeemable in gold or silver - federal reserve notes, the only paper money in circulation today - and in that way hoped that it would gradually inflate the money in circulation. The gold the government collected, along with existing government stockpiles, was transported to an army base in Kentucky where a massive new vault was built to hold it - a place called Fort Knox.
But even as the federal government collected gold coins from its citizens, the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, which had received no instructions to change its usual practices, spent much of early 1933 striking nearly half a million new Saint-Gaudens double eagles, with the new "1933" date, just as it had every year since 1907. Despite the laborious effort that went into creating these new coins - the last gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government for circulation - they never were officially issued by the government. By the mid-1930s, all of them were supposed to all have been melted down as part of the general disposal of the government's gold holdings.
In early 1944, however, it came to the attention of the Secret Service that several coin dealers were offering "rare" 1933-dated double eagles for sale. Secret Service agents fanned out to coin dealers in several eastern cities and Chicago, and eventually recovered nearly a dozen of the coins that employees apparently smuggled out of the Philadelphia Mint, substituting earlier-dated coins for the 1933 variety.
But one of the contraband 1933 double eagles slipped out of the country, into the collection of the then-Egyptian King, Farouk I. Farouk apparently kept the coin in his possession until after he was deposed in 1952. The coin then disappeared for decades, until it turned up in the 1990s at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Once again, the Secret Service became involved, this time staging an elaborate "sting" operation against British coin dealer Stephen Fenton, who brought the coin into the United States.
The Treasury Department and Fenton fought a years-long court battle over ownership of the coin. It was settled in 2001 and that July the coin - which had been stored in the vault at the World Trade Center - was transferred to Fort Knox. It thus barely escaped destruction on September 11.
In July, 2002, the 1933 Saint-Gaudens gold piece went up for auction. It was sold to an anonymous bidder for $6.6 million; with various other charges, the final sales price was over $7.5 million, still the record auction price for any coin. The U.S. government and Stephen Fenton split the sales price - except that the government received an extra $20 from Fenton so as to make the coin, according to the terms of the settlement - the only legal 1933 Saint-Gaudens in private hands.
People v. Roberts (1956) 47 Cal.2d 374
Link
Judicial Follies: The Most Valuable Coinby Frank Zotter Jr.
Updated: 11/30/2009 08:41:53 AM PST
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the man who was undoubtedly the most famous artist in America at that time, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to design new coins for the United States. Roosevelt, a scholar and student of antiquity, asked Saint-Gaudens to design coins that recalled the glory of Greece and the Republic of Rome.
Saint-Gaudens was already ill with the cancer that would eventually take his life, but he designed one $20 gold piece (also known as a "double eagle") that by common consensus is the most beautiful coin ever minted by the United States government. The face of the coin depicts the figure of Lady Liberty, a shield in one hand, taking the last step astride a mountaintop; the reverse shows a large eagle in flight above a radiant rising sun.
Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, the year that the U.S. began minting his new double eagle design, and production of the coins proceeded for the next quarter century. But in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, a different President Roosevelt - Franklin Roosevelt - got the authority from Congress to recall all gold coins in private hands.
The country was suffering from a rare economic condition at the time - deflation; with each passing month, as economic activity declined, prices fell. Roosevelt hoped that by withdrawing gold from circulation, the effect of "cheapening" the money would help to stop the rising value of the money in circulation, and instead would help to prop up the prices of goods and services.
Congress enacted severe penalties for citizens who held onto gold, and although there was an exception for coin collectors, many citizens were spurred into patriotic action and turned in gold bullion and coins. The Government issued paper money that was not redeemable in gold or silver - federal reserve notes, the only paper money in circulation today - and in that way hoped that it would gradually inflate the money in circulation. The gold the government collected, along with existing government stockpiles, was transported to an army base in Kentucky where a massive new vault was built to hold it - a place called Fort Knox.
But even as the federal government collected gold coins from its citizens, the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, which had received no instructions to change its usual practices, spent much of early 1933 striking nearly half a million new Saint-Gaudens double eagles, with the new "1933" date, just as it had every year since 1907. Despite the laborious effort that went into creating these new coins - the last gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government for circulation - they never were officially issued by the government. By the mid-1930s, all of them were supposed to all have been melted down as part of the general disposal of the government's gold holdings.
In early 1944, however, it came to the attention of the Secret Service that several coin dealers were offering "rare" 1933-dated double eagles for sale. Secret Service agents fanned out to coin dealers in several eastern cities and Chicago, and eventually recovered nearly a dozen of the coins that employees apparently smuggled out of the Philadelphia Mint, substituting earlier-dated coins for the 1933 variety.
But one of the contraband 1933 double eagles slipped out of the country, into the collection of the then-Egyptian King, Farouk I. Farouk apparently kept the coin in his possession until after he was deposed in 1952. The coin then disappeared for decades, until it turned up in the 1990s at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Once again, the Secret Service became involved, this time staging an elaborate "sting" operation against British coin dealer Stephen Fenton, who brought the coin into the United States.
The Treasury Department and Fenton fought a years-long court battle over ownership of the coin. It was settled in 2001 and that July the coin - which had been stored in the vault at the World Trade Center - was transferred to Fort Knox. It thus barely escaped destruction on September 11.
In July, 2002, the 1933 Saint-Gaudens gold piece went up for auction. It was sold to an anonymous bidder for $6.6 million; with various other charges, the final sales price was over $7.5 million, still the record auction price for any coin. The U.S. government and Stephen Fenton split the sales price - except that the government received an extra $20 from Fenton so as to make the coin, according to the terms of the settlement - the only legal 1933 Saint-Gaudens in private hands.
People v. Roberts (1956) 47 Cal.2d 374
Link
0