Family Fights United States Mint over Rare Coins

Roy Langbord and his family made an astonishing discovery in an old safe-deposit box. Roys mother had him check the old and long-neglected box a few years ago and what he found was great indeed.

Inside the box, opened in 2003, Roy found an incredibly rare coin collection. There were 10 $20 gold coins, minted in 1933, with a bald eagle on one side and Lady Liberty on the face side. The pieces were never officially released by the Mint and could potentially be worth millions.

New coin collectors and seasoned coin collectors alike know that the rarer the coin the more it is worth. Only a few of this specific coin had ever made it out of Federal Reserve vaults and only one has ever been sold publicly for the price of $7.6 million.

The Langbord family took the coins to the United States Mint to have them authenticated but were surprised when the Mint returned saying that the coins were genuine and that they were going to keep them. The government claims that the coins are government property and were stolen from the Mint in the 1930s by Mr. Langbord’s grandfather. Langbord’s grandfather, a Philadelphia jewelry dealer named Israel Switt, died in 1990. The Langbrd’s insist that Switt acquired the coins legitimately, more than likely through a gold-for-gold exchange program that was used by the Mint in those days.

The family argues that they received the coins legitimately and recently won an important suit against the Mint. A United States District Court judge has decided that the Mint must prove that the coins were in fact stolen or give them back to the Langbord family.

The chances of the Mint proving that the coins were stolen is likely not going to happen, nobody can prove irrefutably what happened nearly 80 years ago. The coins may have been stolen nearly 80 years ago but they surely were not taken by the people who hold them now.

Mr. Fenton, the coin dealer who sold the Farouk double eagle, said that if the coins were sold they should be sold slowly and in a good market they could sell for anywhere in between $4 million and $6 million.

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