This piggy bank was found in the drawer of that desk, when Yang Jing opened the drawer to see if there was anything left in the drawer, it turned out that in addition to some handwritten materials in the drawer, there was a palm-sized piggy bank in the deepest part of the drawer.The piggy bank is porcelain, and the style is also a very simple Huaxia 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 in the United States more than 100 years ago.It was clear that the piggy bank should have been bought by Alfred a long time ago, or even a gift that Alfred had received for Christmas as a child.Anyway, this piggy bank should have had a certain place in Alfred's teenage years, otherwise such a piggy bank would not have appeared in the drawer of his desk.picked up the piggy bank and shook it, Yang Jing found that there were still a lot of coins in the piggy bank.This old-fashioned piggy bank is a "pixiu", which can only enter but not exit, and if you want to take out the coins in the piggy bank, there is no way to carry it except to break the piggy bank.However, although this piggy bank has a history of at least a hundred years, it is not a precious porcelain, and this piggy bank may be a very important thing for 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 this piggy bank with a small hammer, not to mention, there were really good things inside.There are about fifty coins of various sizes in this piggy bank, mostly silver, but also some gold and copper.In the early days of the United States, most of the coins with larger denominations were gold and silver coins, and most of the lower denominations were copper coins.Unlike modern coins, most of them are made of alloys.If this piggy bank really belonged to Alfred, then it was not surprising that gold and silver coins appeared in the piggy bank in his time.Gold and silver coins issued in the early days of the United States are highly collectible, so although these gold and silver coins are not in large numbers, they are actually quite valuable.After carefully distinguishing these gold and silver coins, Yang Jing actually found two somewhat unusual gold coins among them.Both of these coins are very high-value gold coins – twenty dollars in denomination.The obverse of the coin features an image of Lady Liberty holding a torch and an olive branch, and on the north side is an image of an eagle in flight all the time.The face value of twenty dollars, coupled with these two images, immediately made Yang Jing realize that he seemed to have inadvertently picked up another big leak!
If the magazines, books, and even teak furniture found earlier can be regarded as a small leak, then the two golden gold coins that suddenly appeared are definitely a super leak!
This leak is so big that it doesn't cost money to buy this manor, and there is 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 years when the gold standard was implemented in the United States, a gold coin with a face value of ten dollars was issued, which was a goddess of liberty holding a torch and an olive branch on the obverse, and an eagle flying all the time on the back, which was called "eagle coin" by the Americans.And in 1933, the United States issued a coin with a face value of twenty dollars, because the design of the coin is the same as that of the eagle coin, but the face value has been doubled, so in order to distinguish, this eagle coin is called "double eagle coin" by the Americans.This "Double Eagle Coin" was minted in 1933, when a total of 500,000 coins were minted, which is not a rarity.However, shortly after the minting, Roosevelt implemented a new policy and ordered the abolition of the gold standard, so he also had to stop using gold coins.As a result, more than 4.45 million of the "Double Eagle Coins" that had just been minted were finally minted into gold bars in 1937, and the molds used to mint the coins were destroyed.Therefore, this batch of 1933 "Double Eagle Coins" became the last batch of gold coins in the United States, and only a few "Double Eagle Coins" survived to the public, so they are particularly precious and are known as the "Mona Lisa of coins".In 2002, a Double Eagle coin sold for $7.59 million, setting a record for the highest auction of a single coin, and it is also the most valuable coin in the world of coin collecting today, ranking first in the world's coin collection charts.Scarcity is precious, and this old Chinese saying is also vividly reflected in the Double Eagle coin.Because this batch of gold coins was recovered by Roosevelt through administrative means, so in the strict sense, this batch of gold coins is an uncirculated currency, and it is said that at that time, Roosevelt even dispatched agents and national security departments in order to recover some of the Double Eagle coins that were already in circulation in the market.Moreover, the United States also publicly declared at that time that these gold coins should not be kept in the world, and even if they were in the world, they belonged to the property of the United States government.In later generations, only a dozen or so of the Double Eagle coins that were not destroyed were preserved, and only one gold coin was collected by a private collector, and the reason why this collector was able to collect this Double Eagle coin publicly was also preserved because of historical problems, and the other surviving Double Eagle coins were either not publicly publicized by collectors at all, or they were recovered by the U.S. government long ago.The reason why the U.S. government has such a tough attitude towards such a dozen gold coins is mainly because the U.S.
"Gold Savings Act" prohibits private ownership of uncirculated gold currency, although this act was repealed in 1974, but the Double Eagle coin appeared before the repeal of this act, so if the private holder of this gold currency, it is simply illegal Double Eagle itself is a currency that has not really been listed and circulated at all, so if it is held by a private person, it is illegal.In other words, if anyone holds this currency, they are actually holding "stolen goods".For this reason, there was also a case in the United States over the ownership of Double Eagle coins, which ended in a victory for the U.S. government.In 2003, Joan Brownsweete, who lives in Philadelphia, and her two sons found 10 Double Eagle coins in a safe deposit box kept by Joan Brown's father, Israel Vellswaite, at the United Bank, and the family was delighted, after all, the 10 Double Eagle coins were worth more than $70 million at the 2001 auction price.Joan Brown's immediate approach to the U.S.
Mint experts helped identify the ten Double Eagle coins, but although the results of the appraisal can confirm that the ten Double Eagle coins were the fish that slipped through the net that year, the ten Double Eagle coins were directly detained by the U.S. government, 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 worth it?
The most important thing is that this is a Double Eagle coin worth more than 70 million US dollars, why do you US government say that it will be deducted?
No, old lady, I have to deal with the government!
So the old lady and her family took the American Mint in Philadelphia to court, and either your mint would return my ten Double Eagle coins, or you would have to pay me $40 million.Of course, the U.S. government could not agree, so it sent a strong team of lawyers to fight the lawsuit.Joe Sweete, a U.S. government lawyer, hit the nail on the head: "Your family (Joan Brown) never legally owned these ten Double Eagle coins, so why did you detain them?"
”The evidence presented by Joel is very strong, and there are two main points to prove that the Joan family did not legally own the ten Double Eagle coins in the first place.The first piece of evidence is that the person who kept the gold coins in the safe deposit box at Midland Bank was not Joan Brown's father, Sweet, because when the bank rented out the safe deposit box in 1996, Sweet had been dead for six years, so how could he have deposited the ten Double Eagle coins in the bank safe?
Moreover, after Sweet's will came into effect, his family did not put the gold coins in the estate table or pay inheritance tax for it, so why do you say that this is a relic left to you by your father?
This evidence alone has nothing to say to refute the old lady's family.Later, Joel presented a second piece of evidence, which came from the Gold Savings Act, which had been repealed.When this decree was issued, the United States was still on the gold standard, so this decree was absolutely fine, and the "Gold Savings Act" was still in force when the Double Eagle was minted, and the Double Eagle was not listed for circulation, so it was illegal for private individuals to hold this kind of gold coin.In other words, even if these ten Double Eagle Coins are your old man's inheritance left to you, but your old man is breaking the law when he gets these ten Double Eagle Coins, so these ten Double Eagle Coins are "stolen goods"!
These two extremely powerful pieces of evidence led to the defeat of the Joan Brangle family, and the U.S. government was able to recover the ten Double Eagle coins.The ten Double Eagle coins are said to still be kept in the underground vault of Fort Knox in Kentucky.In fact, this case can also explain an important reason why Double Eagle is so precious.You must know that although the Twin Eagle coins destroyed that year accounted for the vast majority, there are still a small number of them circulating.Later, although Roosevelt used agents to recover the circulating Double Eagle coins, a very small number remained.Yang Jing is helpless about what happened to Qiong Bolang's family, but what to do with the two Double Eagle coins in his hand?
In fact, since the discovery of these two Double Eagle coins, Yang Jing has been pondering this matter.In terms of the status of the DuPont family at that time, it is very likely that the two Double Eagle coins were given to Alfred by Roosevelt, because the two Double Eagle coins were not recovered by Roosevelt, which means that Roosevelt knew about it.But the problem is that these things are all their own speculation, and if it cannot be proved that the two Double Eagle coins were indeed gifted to the DuPont family by Roosevelt, then the two Double Eagle coins are also stolen goods.It's a real distressing thing