Happy Tycoon

This piggy bank was found in the drawer of that desk. At that time, Yang Jing opened the drawer to see if there was anything left in the drawer. It turned out that apart from some handwritten materials in the drawer, there was no money left in the drawer. There is actually a palm-sized piggy bank in the deepest part.

The piggy bank is made of porcelain, and the style is also the very simple Chinese Fuwa shape. Although there are many piggy banks of this shape in China, they are rare in the United States on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, especially the United States more than a hundred years ago. Obviously, this piggy bank should have been bought by Alfred a long time ago, and it was even a gift that Alfred received on Christmas when he was a child.

Anyway, this piggy bank should have had a certain status in Alfred's youth, otherwise such a piggy bank would not have appeared in the desk drawer.

Picking up the piggy bank and shaking it, Yang Jing found that there were still a lot of coins in the piggy bank.

This kind of old-fashioned piggy bank is a pixiu, which can only go in but not out. If you want to take out the coins in the piggy bank, you have no way to carry them except breaking the piggy bank.

However, although this piggy bank has a history of at least a hundred years, it is not precious porcelain, and this piggy bank may be a very important thing to Alfred who has passed away for a long time, but For Yang Jing, there is no psychological burden to break this piggy bank.

So Yang Jing smashed the piggy bank with a small hammer, not to mention, there were really good things inside.

There are about fifty coins of different sizes in this piggy bank, most of them are silver coins, and there are also some gold coins and copper coins.

The coins issued in the early days of the United States were mostly gold and silver coins with larger denominations, and mostly copper coins with lower denominations. Unlike modern coins, most of them are made of alloy.

If this piggy bank really belonged to Alfred, then it is not surprising that gold and silver coins appeared in the piggy bank in the age of his life.

The gold and silver coins issued in the early days of the United States are now of high collection value, so although the number of these gold and silver coins is not large, their value is actually not low.

After carefully distinguishing these gold and silver coins, Yang Jing actually found two somewhat unusual gold coins among them.

Both gold coins were of high denomination—twenty dollars. On the obverse of the coin is an image of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and an olive branch, and on the north is an image of an eagle in flight.

The face value of twenty dollars, together with these two images, immediately made Yang Jing realize that he seemed to have picked up another big leak inadvertently!

If the magazines and books and even the teak furniture found earlier were considered a small leak, then the sudden appearance of these two golden gold coins is definitely a super big leak!

This big leak is so big that it doesn't cost money to buy this manor, and there is still a lot of surplus!

There is no other reason, because these two gold coins turned out to be the legendary Double Eagle Coins.

In the era when the United States implemented the gold standard, a ten-dollar gold coin was issued. The front of this gold coin was a statue of Liberty holding a torch and an olive branch, and the back was a flying eagle. This ten-dollar gold coin was Americans call it Eagle Coin.

In 1933, the United States issued another coin with a face value of twenty dollars, because the pattern of the coin was the same as that of the eagle coin, but the face value was doubled, so in order to distinguish it, this eagle coin was adopted by the United States. It is called Double Eagle Coin.

This Double Eagle Coin was minted in 1933, and a total of 500,000 pieces were minted at that time, which is not rare. But not long after it was minted, Roosevelt implemented the New Deal and ordered the abolition of the gold standard, so the use of gold coins was also stopped. As a result, more than 445,000 of this batch of Double Eagle Coins that had just been minted for a short time were finally recast into gold bars in 1937, and the molds for casting gold coins were also destroyed.

Therefore, this batch of Double Eagle Coins in 1933 became the last batch of gold coins in the United States. Only a few Double Eagle Coins survived among the people, so they are extremely precious and known as the Mona Lisa of coins.

This kind of gold coin is extremely precious. In 2002, a Double Eagle Coin was auctioned for a sky-high price of 7.59 million US dollars, setting the highest auction record for a single coin. Top of the list.

Rare things are precious, this old Chinese saying is also vividly reflected in the double eagle coins.

Because these gold coins were recovered by Roosevelt through administrative means, strictly speaking, these gold coins belong to uncirculated currency, and it is said that Roosevelt even dispatched to recover some double eagle coins that had been circulating in the market at that time. secret agents and national security services. Moreover, the United States publicly announced at the time that these gold coins should not remain in the world, and even if they remain in the world, they belong to the property of the US government.

In later generations, there were only a dozen double eagle coins that were not destroyed that year, and only one gold coin was kept by a private collector. The other surviving Double Eagle coins were either because collectors simply didn't dare to publicize them, or they were taken back by the US government long ago.

The reason why the U.S. government has such a tough attitude towards so many gold coins is mainly because the U.S. Gold Savings Act prohibited private ownership of uncirculated gold coins. Although this act was repealed in 1974, both Eagle coins appeared before the abolition of this act, so if you hold this gold currency privately, it is illegal at all. is illegal.

In other words, if anyone holds this currency, he actually holds stolen goods.

For this reason, a case concerning the ownership of Double Eagle coins broke out in the United States, and finally ended with the victory of the U.S. government.

Joan Braun Sweet and her two sons living in Philadelphia found ten Double Eagles in a safe deposit box of Joan Braun's father, Israel Sweet, in Wachovia Bank in 2003. At that time, the family was overjoyed. After all, based on the auction price in 2001, the value of these ten double eagle coins was as high as more than 70 million US dollars.

Joan Braun immediately found experts from the U.S. Mint to help identify the ten double eagle coins. However, although the results of the identification confirmed that the ten double eagle coins were the fish that slipped through the net, these ten double eagle coins were The U.S. government directly withheld it, and the answer given by the U.S. government was quite imposing - these ten Double Eagle coins do not belong to you!

Is such an accusation worthwhile? The most important thing is that this is a double eagle coin worth more than 70 million U.S. dollars. Why does the U.S. government withhold it? No, old lady, I have to deal with the government!

So the old lady's family sued the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia with a lawsuit. Either your mint will return my ten double eagle coins, or you will have to pay me forty million dollars.

Of course, the U.S. government could not agree, so it sent a powerful team of lawyers to fight the lawsuit.

U.S. government lawyer Joel Sweet pointed out sharply, Your family (Joan Braun) never legally owned these ten Double Eagle coins, so why did you say that you detained them?

The evidence provided by Joel is very sufficient. There are two main points to prove that Joan Braun's family never legally owned the ten double eagle coins.

The first evidence is that the person who kept the gold coins in the Wachovia Bank safe was not Joan Braun's father, Sweet, because when Wachovia leased out the safe in 1996, Sweet had been dead for six years. Double Eagle coins deposited in the bank safe?

Moreover, after Sweet’s will came into effect, his family did not include the gold coins in the inheritance list or pay inheritance tax for them. Why do you say that you, an old lady, say that this is a relic left by your father?

Just this one piece of evidence left the old lady's family speechless.

Subsequently, Joel presented the second evidence, which came from the abolished Gold Savings Act.

When this decree was promulgated, the United States was still on the gold standard, so this decree was absolutely fine. When the Double Eagle Coin was minted, the Gold Savings Act was still in effect, and the Double Eagle Coin was not listed for circulation. Therefore, it is illegal to hold such gold coins privately.

That is to say, even if these ten Double Eagle coins are the inheritance left to you by your old man, it is illegal for your old man to get these ten Double Eagle coins, so these ten Double Eagle coins belong to swag!

These two extremely powerful evidences made Joan Braun's family lose the lawsuit, and the U.S. government took back the ten Double Eagle coins in an open and honest manner. The ten Double Eagles are said to still be kept in an underground vault at Fort Knox in Kentucky.

In fact, this case can also explain an important reason why Double Eagle coins are so precious. You must know that although the vast majority of Double Eagle coins were destroyed that year, there are still a small number of them that have been circulated. Later, although Roosevelt used special agents to recover the double eagle coins that had been circulated, there were still very few left.

Yang Jing had nothing to do about what happened to Joan Braun's family, but what should he do with the two double eagle coins in his hand?

In fact, Yang Jing has been thinking about this since he discovered these two double eagle coins.

In terms of the status of the DuPont family at that time, it is very likely that Roosevelt gave the two double eagle coins to Alfred, because the two double eagle coins were not taken back by Roosevelt, which means that Roosevelt knew about this matter. Yes.

But the problem is that these things are all my own guesses. If it can't be proved that these two double eagle coins were indeed presented to the DuPont family by Roosevelt, then these two double eagle coins are supposed to be stolen goods.

this is really a distressing thing