More double eagles turn up...

[mint_mark]

...in this story on BBC news website.

I wonder why the US mint make such a big deal with these?

[Geordie582]

Who can fathom the thinking of our cousins across the pond to account for their actions? Logic doesn't come into it! Think of the boost to the coin market if these were available!

[Sylvester]

Think of all the British coins that escaped.

1937 Edward VIII Threepences being notable examples. Thinking of the Madge Kitchener variety. They shouldn't have got out as they were for test purposes but they did.

The government and the mint know they are out there but they don't give a toss about it. What's the point spend and wasting all that money on investigations into where a coin is when you can solve a murder case or two with those funds, wages etc. Plus the government really has more important things to do.

It's quite scary that the US government has seemingly put more effort into finding ten missing gold coins than they have in finding other missing people with beards.

[Chris Perkins]

Mr Fenton is Knightbridge coins isn't he. My mate Richard knows him.

They do really want those coins don't they! Crazy.

[Sylvester]

You wouldn't believe it Chris the lengths they've gone to to get many of them.

Apart from these ten specimens, about two or three others that were in the Smithsonian museum and one legal to own specimen all others that had been smuggled out and found were melted in the 1950/60s i think.

One particular specimen (and this is the only 1933 Double Eagle that is legal to sell and own) ended up in the King of Egypt's collection. When the king was overthrown and his palace raided the US authorities demanded that the 1933 double eagle be turned over to the US government for destruction. The coin disappeared and the US played hell about it.

They spent the next thirty odd years tracking it down, tapping phones and what not to try and source where it had gone.

It turned up mysteriously in the custody of a British dealer who was trying to sell it on the quiet to a US collector, when the dealer went to the US with it the secret services did a raid aprehended him and the coin. The coin was sent to the WTC for safe keeping and the dealer was incarcerated for holding stolen goods.

A massive court case ensured and a settlement was reached, the dealer was released and the coin was agreed to be auctioned. The coin however, had still not been released officially by the US mint and therefore was still considered property of the mint, so to get around this the mint had to officially release it.

So the auction set the world record for most expensive coin ever at several million $s, and then the buyer after paying the excess auction fees had then to pay the US mint $20 on top. That $20 of course was so that he was exchanging it with the Mint which meant the coin had now been officially released. As such it's the only legal one to own.

The buyer then apparently as part of the auction sale conditions had made the government/mint promise not to release any more 1933 double eagles ever. Which basically means for now they cannot release the ones they have found to auction. So they are stuck with them.

Of course governments can overturn settlement rulings but the whole saga got rather messy and rather complicated and totally over the top. The 'unique' 1933 (to own at any rate) left the WTC in August 2001 and went to the buyer who has been kept anonoymous. If it had stayed there another month then knowing the total obsession the US authorities have had with this coin can you imagine how they would have dealt with the final stages of the ground zero clean up? Knowing that a coin they'd spent the last 50 odd years tracking was probably under there maybe still intact...

Most governments would of course have the sense to value human life above such things as coins but looking at how far they went to get it it'd be hard to imagine them not cordoning it off and going through it with a toothpick for the next year. And for what? To throw it into a furnace as soon as they'd reclaimed it. It's sheer bloody madness.

[Chris Perkins]

Is there something hidden inside them? Weapons grade Uranium or something? That could be the only reason they want them so badly, surely, or or they just mad?

[Sylvester]

I think they've got a point to prove.

"You steal something off of us and we will get it back (it may take us 60 years but the person who bought it off of the person who bought it off of the person who stole them will pay and wish they'd never been born".

Pinching coins is as bad as damaging a US flag, which is a cardinal offence in itself.