Gold Coins

Demand was brisk yesterday for American Eagle coins, the first general- circulation U.S. gold coins to be minted in more than a half-century By the end of the day, officials at the U.S. Mint said they had processed orders for more than 320,000 ounces of gold from two dozen primary dealers. The coins, which are aimed at investors, will have a face value of $50, $25, $10 and $5 but will sell for far more than that. The price will fluctuate, reflecting the price of gold. The coins will contain gold in amounts ranging from one-tenth of an ounce for the $5 coin up to a full ounce in the $50 gold piece.

This story was updated at 11 a.m. Monday A federal judge has upheld a 2011 jury decision that a Philadelphia family that found 10 purloined gold coins worth at least $7.59 million each cannot keep them. The coins, "double eagle" $20 gold pieces, were among 445,500 the Philadelphia Mint produced in 1933 that were never circulated because the federal government that year outlawed the possession of gold coins. "The disputed double eagles were not lawfully removed from the United States Mint and . . . remain the property of the United States," U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis wrote in his Aug. 29 judgment, upholding the decision of a federal court jury in July 2011.

When the Spanish treasure galleons Nuestra Senora de Atocha and Santa Margarita were found off the Florida coast in 1982, historians had to alter the dates for the earliest minting in the New World. Among the 180,000 coins found in those wrecks were three gold coins dated 1622. Until then, no gold coins were known to have been struck in the Americas before 1628. One of those three coins will be sold at auction June 14 at Christie's in New York. A small number of silver coins recovered from the same wrecks also will be auctioned.

Old-time radio listeners might remember "Parkyakarkus," a character created by Boston-born Harry Einstein. Besides being a radio personality and sometime movie actor, Einstein, who died in 1958, was a keen coin collector who was able to retire from show business at the age of 44 on the strength of his investments. His collection will be sold June 23-25 as part of a major offering of coins at the St. Moritz-on-the-Park Hotel, Central Park South in New York City. Einstein's collection ran to gold, and of the 855 lots in the catalogue, about 650 contain important gold coins.

Each Christmastime, for the past five or six years, a benevolent and anonymous donor has dropped several valuable gold coins into a Salvation Army kettle somewhere in Philadelphia. Last year, he secretly dropped four coins, worth more than $300 each, into a kettle in Roxborough. But, it's beginning to look like Philly's Legend of the Gold Coins has ended. "Usually we have the gold coins by now," Chaz Watson, director of development for the five-county Salvation Army area said yesterday.

The United States will begin competing on Monday with South Africa, Canada and Mexico in the worldwide gold coins market when Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d strikes the first U.S. gold coin to be minted and sold to the public since 1932. The government hopes to start collecting some of the estimated $1 billion a year that Americans have been spending for foreign-made gold coins ever since private ownership of gold became legal in this country in 1973. But, as with so much of what the federal government does nowadays, the sale is already steeped in politics, controversy and confusion over its design and its marketing.

For collectors and investors, 1986 is the year of the gold coin. Not only will the Statue of Liberty gold commemoratives be introduced, but about Oct. 1 the first U.S. bullion coins will be offered for sale. Legislation to authorize the bullion coins, signed in mid-December, directs the Treasury to issue one-ounce coins and three fractional coins: one-half, one-quarter and one-tenth ounces. The legal tender coins will have nominal values of $50, $25, $10 and $5, but their sale price will be keyed to the price of gold plus a surcharge to cover production and distribution costs.

An unusually large collection of gold coins minted in San Francisco will be sold Oct. 22-23 at the Omni Park Central Hotel, 56th St. at Seventh Avenue, New York City. The trove of gold coins from a private collection includes complete sets by year, mostly in uncirculated condition. The collection, which will be auctioned by Sack's, also includes complete coinage by Augustus Saint-Gaudens by year. The San Francisco Mint began production in 1854 in the wake of the California gold rush.

Tomorrow is the date for the first sales of the U.S. gold bullion coins. However, Treasury Department officials say that buyers will not be able to walk into their banks and coin shops and walk out with gold coins. "Everybody has made out that this is a magical day," said a Treasury spokesman. "Actually, we are still getting our network going because we decided to sell these coins through a network of established private dealers - banks, brokerage houses, precious metals dealers and coin shops.

This story was updated at 11 a.m. Monday A federal judge has upheld a 2011 jury decision that a Philadelphia family that found 10 purloined gold coins worth at least $7.59 million each cannot keep them. The coins, "double eagle" $20 gold pieces, were among 445,500 the Philadelphia Mint produced in 1933 that were never circulated because the federal government that year outlawed the possession of gold coins. "The disputed double eagles were not lawfully removed from the United States Mint and . . . remain the property of the United States," U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis wrote in his Aug. 29 judgment, upholding the decision of a federal court jury in July 2011.

GETTYSBURG - Someone dropped a coin worth about $1,700 into a Salvation Army kettle in central Pennsylvania. Again. A gold South African Krugerrand was discovered Wednesday in a kettle outside a Wal-Mart near Gettysburg. The valuable coin has appeared in Gettysburg-area kettles for several years. But no one knows whom to thank for the generosity. Local Salvation Army unit organizer C.K. Roulette said he was content with the mystery remaining unsolved. He said it added excitement during long, cold hours of bell-ringing.

Gold always generates an emotional debate between opposing true believers: people who love gold (a.k.a. gold bugs), and people who deride the yellow metal as a "barbarous relic. " But with America's excessive debt and negative real interest rates, gold lovers continue winning the argument. After Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke promised Tuesday that interest rates would stay near zero until mid-2013, gold soared yet again as investors raced to the precious metal and gold-mining shares as a haven against inflation and a weakening dollar and as a way to protect their savings.

Ten rare $20 gold pieces that would be worth millions to coin collectors instead will remain in Fort Knox and not be returned to the descendents of a Philadelphia jeweler, a federal court jury decided Wednesday. After five hours of deliberation following a seven-day trial, the two men and eight women declared that when the valuable Double Eagle coins ended up in the hands of Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt in the 1930s, they did not arrive legitimately. All 445,500 coins produced in 1933 were supposed to have been destroyed by 1937, and any that escaped being melted into bullion had been stolen, said the government.

1933 'double eagle' case The federal government rightfully seized a set of never-circulated 1933 gold coins from a Philadelphia woman who said she found them in her late father's bank-deposit box, a jury found yesterday. The verdict capped the civil case that turned on whether the $20 "double eagles" ever legally left the U.S. Mint. Prosecutors argued that the coins never circulated when the country went off the gold standard - and were therefore stolen, with help from the woman's father, jeweler Israel Switt.

The one person who may have known how 10 gold coins, minted in 1933 and worth millions of dollars, ended up in the hands of Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt took the witness stand in federal court Tuesday - and said she had no idea. That means a jury will have to rely on thick binders of Philadelphia Mint records from the 1930s and 1940s to determine if the rare $20 gold pieces were stolen, as the government insists, or are legitimately the property of Switt's descendants. Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, 81, said "I have no idea" about how her father had obtained the Double Eagle coins.

Israel Switt, long deceased but once considered a "patriarch" of Philadelphia's Jewelers Row, was an honest, if curmudgeonly, dealer in coins and gold. Or maybe he was actually an eager participant in a 1930s scheme to sell coveted gold coins stolen from the U.S. Mint. More than 75 years later, a federal jury will determine the truth. Switt died in 1990 at 95, but for his descendants, the decision will be worth tens of millions of dollars. At stake is the ownership of ten $20 gold pieces minted in 1933, extraordinarily rare and stunningly valuable Double Eagle coins likely worth at least $7.59 million each.

Israel Switt, long deceased but once considered a "patriarch" of Philadelphia's Jewelers Row, was an honest, if curmudgeonly, dealer in coins and gold. Or maybe he was actually an eager participant in a 1930s scheme to sell coveted gold coins stolen from the U.S. Mint. More than 75 years later, a federal jury will determine the truth. Switt died in 1990 at 95, but for his descendants, the decision will be worth tens of millions of dollars. At stake is the ownership of ten $20 gold pieces minted in 1933, extraordinarily rare and stunningly valuable Double Eagle coins likely worth at least $7.59 million each.

Dear Harry: I have been seriously considering putting a portion of my investments in gold. I think the gold bugs actually have a weak case in linking gold prices to inflation, but our exploding national debt practically mandates printing more dollars. Even at the current record prices, holding some gold seems prudent as an asset-preserver. I'm not sure of the best way to invest in it. ETFs (exchange-traded funds) charge hefty fees, and I don't like the idea of sleeping on a bunch of gold coins or bars.