PHILADELPHIA (CN) - As a forfeiture trial over 10 rare gold coins valued at roughly $80 million began, the presiding judge told jurors: "This will be infinitely more interesting and fascinating intellectually than anything you will see on TV." The U.S. Mint calls the 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles "one of the most sought-after rarities in history."
A single Double Eagle sold for more than $7.5 million at a Sotheby's auction in the summer of 2002, making it at the time the most valuable coin ever auctioned.
Augustus St. Gaudens, a sculptor and artist, designed the coin, which many collectors consider the most beautiful U.S. coin ever.
In 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, 445,500 such coins were struck at the Philadelphia Mint, a few blocks from the Federal Courthouse where the trial is occurring.
Before the coins entered into circulation, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the nation's banks to abandon the Gold Standard and outlawed the use of gold coins as American currency.
The overwhelming majority of the 1933 Double Eagles were melted into gold bars.
Only two, which were sent to the Smithsonian, were supposed to have survived.
But in 2003, the daughter and grandsons of storied Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt drilled open a safety-deposit box. Inside that box, nestled among Switt's belongings, sat a gray paper Wanamaker's department store bag.
In the bag, wrapped in tissue paper, were 10 1933 Double Eagles.
Now, nearly 80 years after the coins were struck, "The government simply wants its coins back," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero told jurors in her opening statement on Thursday.
The United States says the coins are stolen property.
"It's really very simple," she said. "No 1933 Double Eagles left the Philadelphia Mint through lawful channels."
A small number - roughly 20 - were pilfered with help from a corrupt Philadelphia Mint cashier, Romero said.
"The only reason for their existence outside the Philadelphia Mint is that they were stolen," Romero said. "Israel Switt was somehow involved."
Romero told jurors: "At the close of this case, the government will do exactly what it has done for the last 70 years ... and finally bring them home to their rightful owner: the people of the United States of America."
The Secret Service, charged with protecting U.S. currency, has spent decades trying to track down the missing 1933 Double Eagles.
All the while, Romero said, agents were trying to answer the question: "Who's the source? Who's the fence?"
"The search led them to one person: Israel Switt," she said.
"The distribution chain started here."
Switt, a jeweler and scrap-metal dealer who died in 1990, was considered the patriarch of Philadelphia's Jeweler's Row, where his store remains.
The government says he was also a hoarder of illegal gold.
The October 1929 stock market crash shook Americans' confidence in the banking system. Fears of total financial collapse precipitated a frenzy of gold withdrawals from U.S. banks.
"There were hundreds of millions of dollars [in gold] literally bleeding from the nation's banks," Romero said.
To stop the losses, FDR prohibited banks from issuing gold payouts to accountholders, and demanded that paper money, silver or checks be issued instead.
Americans were required to surrender their gold to the Treasury in exchange for an equivalent amount of nongold U.S. currency.