Numismatic Articles

The U.S. Treasury’s high-handed seizure of a 1933 St. Gaudens Double Eagle from a British dealer lured to America under false pretenses by a Secret Service Agent posing as a buyer for the coin is outrageous to me, and should be highly disturbing to you, the collector. The arrest of this dealer, Stephen Fenton, and of his American agent, Jay Parrino, on charges of allegedly possessing stolen U.S. government property is frightening to all of us.

Popular legend has long held that no 1933 Double Eagles were ever “officially” released by the U.S. Treasury, and that somehow this made them illegal to possess (other than the two specimens “officially” given by the Treasury to the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution). This is despite the fact that several 1933 $20s were publicly advertised and sold in the numismatic market between 1933 and 1944, at which point the Treasury suddenly and arbitrarily decided that they could not be sold after all, and began seizing them and destroying them!

Although most common gold coins were required to be surrendered to the U.S. Treasury at face value by the Gold Surrender Act of 1933 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, the laws specifically exempted “gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins” from the requirement, and the 1933 Double Eagle certainly qualified as a rare and unusual coin. These laws were ultimately nullified by Public Law 93-373, which made all forms of gold legal for Americans to own again and was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on August 14, 1974, and again by Executive Order 11825, promulgated by Ford on December 31, 1974.

This would appear to make the 1933 $20s legal to own now, a point arguably subject to debate and interpretation when the Treasury began seizing them in 1944. However, the Treasury now claims, without substantiation, that the 1933 $20s are actually stolen government property, a charge significantly not raised by the Treasury when two earlier victims of government seizure in the late 1940s and early 1950s sued the government for the return of their property.

Those lawsuits were conducted at a time when the Gold Surrender Act was in effect to support the Treasury’s otherwise weak position. In both cases the litigants abandoned their efforts in the face of the endless legal fees incurred in challenging Uncle Sam’s deep pockets. However, neither litigant was ever faced with the threat of criminal prosecution.
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by Len Ratzman – California Numismatist – Vol. 6 No.2 (Summer 2009)

When a mint error is first discovered, a predictably lengthy process is begun involving multiple recognized experts in the field to examine and scrutinize the coin’s authenticity under high magnification to separate a bona fide error from a manufactured counterfeit.

Ideally, after sufficient time and examinations have been made, the coin is either accepted or rejected by the numismatic community. But, in reality, there is a third possibility – unending disagreement among the experts. This outcome, of course, leaves many of us who are looking for definitive answers in relative limbo.

If decades go by and recognized, numismatic authorities still are conflicted as to the authenticity of the coin, what then? If, for instance, someone tried to buy or sell a specimen with this error to a dealer, another collector or at auction, how could they vouch for the legitimacy of the error and, in turn, ask a realistic price? This article is devoted to one such enigma that the author discovered by accident.

In a relatively recent attempt to determine if the Smithsonian Institute’s buffalo nickel collection was missing any specimens after all these years, an email inquiry was sent in early January to Mr. Richard Doty, the senior curator of numismatics for the Behring Center.

Sent from the American Museum of Natural History Behring Center where the coins are stored, Mr. Doty’s e-mail responded, “Your inquiry was passed to me. We do have a set of buffalo nickels, only lacking the 1934 two-legged and 1916 doubled die and 1918/7 varieties.”

Nineteen thirty-four, two-legged? When anyone specializes in one coin and finds (after decades devoted to researching that coin) that a variety exists unknown to that collector, it’s a very humbling experience.

A search of the Red Book, several Internet population reports, and reference books containing buffalo mint errors revealed many mint errors were listed but no mention of any two-legged varieties. Continued