1933 St Gaudens Double Eagles

Not to mention the government in the years before 1933 offered collectors a chance to order various Double Eagles for face value plus shipping

A tax where the government takes no risk, but gets a large cut of the profit. The money the government takes is not spent by the earner which would create jobs. It's not reinvested by the earner which would create jobs. It's flushed down the toilet of the government so that power hungry politicians can keep voters depending on them. Or, so government lawyers can use the funds to deprive people of their liberty and property, like in this particular case. It's pretty hard to see how the rich (or anyone for that matter) get any benefit from having the earnings from their investments taken from them.

Statutes of limitation deal with punishment for a crime. If Izzy was still alive he couldn't be convicted and sent to jail for theft. (If they could actually prove he stole them.) But there is no statute of limitations on the ownership of stolen property. Stolen property always remains the property of the person it was stolen from. (So technically the 1913 V nickels still belong to the government.)



The rate they paid was the going market rate (or a little above)



I never said they were voluntary, it WAS mandatory but they were compensated at the market price, the gold was not STOLEN.

The thing about the market price is that it's set by a willing buying and a willing seller. Absent either being willing, it's not a market price. Consider also that the market price occurs at the lowest point where there is a willing seller among all sellers. So by definition, it's at the very bottom of the values all owners would put on the property they own.

They took the freedom to own a type of property and then paid people what they determined was fair. This was wrong for two reasons. One, you can't put a financial value on freedom. The government did this with the purpose of depriving people of their financial freedom. They didn't want people using a monetary system that the government did not control. Two, most people didn't view it as a fair price. If they had, they would have willingly entered in to the transactions. The feds wouldn't have had to make it mandatory with threat of penalty for anyone who didn't comply.

Look at this another way. If I like your coin collection, decide that I want it, force you to sell it under threat of the loss of your freedom, and pay you the market rate for your coins, are you going to consider your collection stolen? Heck yes you are. If the government does the same thing, are you going to say that it wasn't stolen and all's fair? I think not. The government can steal just like individuals can steal just like corporations (an entity made up of a group of owners) can steal.

BTW, the 1913 V nickels do not belong to the government. As in this case, they are past the deadline for filing a claim. Whether they were manufactured illegally and stolen to begin with doesn't matter at this point.



And of course Roosevelt did have a choice. He just chose the path of an economic theory that deprived people of their freedom and kept the country in an economic downturn for an extended period of time. But I guess that's getting slightly off topic.

Nope, the coins were clearly made through unauthorized use of government property and that property was taken away without authorization making them stolen government property. (There was no way a 1913 V nickel could legally be made and kept.) Even though over a hundred years have passed they are still government property. The government could seize them, the current holders could sue for their return and THEN (under the laws cited in the Lanbord decision) the government has 90 days to file a forfeiture claim with the court in order to keep them. That 90 day deadline does not start until AFTER the current holder appeals the seizure. The current holders can't be prosecuted for the theft (although an argument could be made for receiving stolen property) because the statute of limitations for that has expired. But if the government wanted to go to court and argue they were stolen they would have a much stronger case than they do on the 1933 double eagles and if they are determined to be stolen they would still be government property.

Conder101, thanks for the clarification regarding the 1913 V nickels. I misremembered things, so I was wrong.


If freedom and liberty are ideology, then consider me guilty. Nothing wrong with it in my opinion. Just because it went on from Roosevelt to Nixon, that doesn't make it right. Throughout history people have owned gold and decided themselves what it's worth, so it's not a new concept in the big scheme of history. Kings/tryants have tried to control the precious metals markets so they can get a cut and exercise power over people. It was not done for the benefit of people, but rather at their expense. If someone has a problem with me owning a piece of metal that doesn't harm them or me, then something's wrong with them.

Which should illustrate why tying an economy to one commodity has definite pitfalls. Sure, fiat currencies are subject to be manipulated by those in power, but changes in commodity prices caused by seemingly insignificant events can wreck an otherwise stable economy. We can control abuse by those in power if we choose to. We can't control commodity markets near as easily.

I look at it this way. Does digging something out of the ground and then storing it in a vault somewhere that I can't withdraw from make any more sense than fiat money? Not in my opinion.