Can you spend a gold coin?
Gold coins can certainly be sold for cash today, but can they be used as legal tender? Legal tender is defined as anything that by law will erase any debt when exchanged. There use to be a time when people exchanged precious metals as currency, but over the years it evolved. During the Gold Rush of 1849 (actually began in 1848) many companies minted their own gold coins. This created a problem, some people refused to accept certain coins as form of payment. The Government decided on a solution. The solution they settled on was they would mint a universal set of currency that had to be accepted to clear all debt. This became the standard currency for the US. As the years passed by, paper money was introduced. This paper money could only be printed in accordance to how much gold the United States actually had. In 1933 Roosevelt wanted to switch us from gold as our primary currency to paper money. He confiscated all the gold in the US, which allowed him to print money in accordance to how much the United States, would be worth. This system worked very similar to how we use modern day credit. All the gold coins that were collect were melted down in to bullion and stored in the Federal Reserve, but of course there was a catch. If you could afford it, then you could buy gold in other countries and keep it there. This is exactly what President Roosevelt did. Many of these coins were melted down. The few coins that survived into the modern era are worth significantly more. Now, are gold coins legal tender today? Technically, yes. Gold coins can be spent today, because the law was never changed. These gold coins are much better to collect then spend. If you spend these coins you will significant profit. It would be a better bet to sell gold coins and take the cash you make off them and spend that. Congress revoked the bill in 1977 that was put in place by Roosevelt, which opened the market up to gold coins. Since then, gold coins have entered the collections of many different coin investors. These coins are more expensive than modern day coins, but will worth the price difference.
Comments are closed.