The Case of the Double Eagle Gold Coins

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

WHEN JOAN LANGBORD found ten gold coins in a family safedeposit box in 2003, she knew she’d unburied a treasure. Langbord, then 75, had worked in her late father’s Philadelphia jewelry 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 445,500 double eagles were minted in 1933, each one valued at $20, they were never issued. Instead, 500 coins were held by the U.S. 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 in Kentucky.

Or so the Mint thought. In the 1940s, reports of private collectors trading 1933 double eagles shocked Mint officials and sparked a Secret Service investigation. The agents discovered that a cashier had smuggled an unknown number of the coins out of the Mint. The Feds traced ten of them to Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt—joan Langbord’s father.