The Government is Not Your Friend
Another painful lesson learned,
this time courtesy of the U.S. Mint: A woman found ten priceless 1993
Double Eagle gold coins among the possessions of her late father. When
she turned them into the mint to be verified as authentic, they
confiscated them from her, claiming that the coins were “taken from the
Mint “‘in an unlawful manner’” in the mid-1930s and now were
“‘recovered.’”
Although they (according to the woman’s lawyer) have no proof of theft,
the Mint is sure that they are illegal because “the
445,500 coins minted in 1933 were never put into circulation because
the nation went off the gold standard. All the coins were ordered
melted down, but a handful are believed to have survived, including two
handed over to the Smithsonian Institution.”
When the woman discovered the coins, she and her son notified the Mint,
which asked to authenticate the coins, which then stole them after
doing so. Mint officials say that they told her “from the beginning
that the coins would not be returned because they were the government’s
property.”
What I can’t figure out is the Mint’s motivation here: Why not just
give the woman her coins back? What’s the harm? They have no plans to
sell the things, and they’ve melted down (!!!!) other such coins that
they’ve stolen in the past. Why won’t the bureaucrats just leave well
enough alone?
(Via Hugh
Hewitt, who finally has an RSS feed now.)