Newstory:Family Sues Mint For Return of Double Eagles

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Family Sues Mint For Return Of Rare Coins

PHILADELPHIA -- A family claims in a federal lawsuit that the U.S. Mint illegally seized 10 gold coins that the family had found among a dead relative's possessions.

The coins are considered among the rarest and most valuable in the world.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, alleges that the Mint violated the Constitution and broke federal forfeiture laws by refusing to return the 1933 coins to the family.

Joan S. Langbord discovered the coins in a safe deposit box belonging to her deceased father, Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt, in 2003 .. . . . . .

n 2002, a 1933 double eagle was sold for $7.59 million, the highest price ever paid for a coin. After a legal battle, the coin dealer was permitted to sell it at auction on the condition he split the proceeds with the Mint.

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"Double eagles were first struck in 1850. They are so named because they had a face value of $20, twice the amount of gold coins known as eagles.

The coins, which Mint officials have said are so rare that their value could not be calculated, feature a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. There were 445,500 minted in 1933, but they were melted down before being released into circulation when President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard.

A handful escaped, however. Two were deliberately set aside and are at the Smithsonian Institution." . . .

The original owner "Switt, who died in 1990, told Secret Service agents in 1944 that he had possessed and sold nine 1933 double eagles, according to the Mint. All were tracked down by the government and destroyed between 1944 and 1952.

"The Mint's lawless position is that by merely claiming the coins were somehow removed from the Mint unlawfully in the 1930s, they can take the Langbords' property without proving it in a court of law," Berke said.

The coins at the center of the lawsuit were briefly displayed this summer for an American Numismatic Association's convention in Denver. They have been secured at the U.S. Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, Ky"


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