Illegal tender

"In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create what became America's most beautiful coin. In 1933, in the darkness of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed wartime powers and recalled all gold and banned its private ownership." "But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down…