The Case Of The Double Eagle Gold Coins

A woman finds rare 1933 coins in her family’s safedeposit box. Can the US government confiscate them?

- Vicki Glembocki

WHEN JOAN LANGBORD found 10 gold coins in a family safe deposit box in 2003, she knew she’d unburied a treasure. Langbord, then 75, had worked in her late father’s Philadelphia jewellery store her entire life, and she was fairly sure that the coins were 1933 double eagles. Designed by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens with Lady Liberty on one side and a bald eagle on the other, the 1933 double eagle is one of America’s rarest and most beautiful coins.

Although 4,45,500 double eagles were minted in 1933, each one valued at $20, they were never issued. Instead, 500 coins were held by the US Mint’s cashier, and the rest were sealed away in the agency’s basement vault. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had pulled all gold coins from circulation because people were hoarding gold during the Depression, depleting the Federal Reserve’s stash. The Mint ultimately sent two of the 1933 double eagles to the Smithsonian; the rest were melted into bars and stored in the just-built Fort Knox [US Bullion Depository] in Kentucky.