A family was awarded the rights to 10 rare gold coins possibly worth $ 80 million or more on Friday after a US appeals court overturned a jury verdict . US Department of the Treasury officials insist the $ 20 Double Eagles were stolen from the US Mint in Philadelphia before the 1933 series was melted down when the country went off the gold standard . They argued that Joan Langbord and her sons can not lawfully own the coins , which she said she found in a family bank deposit box in 2003 . Scroll down for video . Ten 1933 Double Eagle coins , which were almost all destroyed when the US went off the gold standard , have been given back to the Langbord family after a length legal dispute with the government . The family found the valuables in a bank deposit box for Joan Langbord 's father Israel Switt , a Philadelphia jeweler ( left , in 1944 ) . The government believed that Switt stole the coins from a mint in 1933 . Langbord 's father , jeweler Israel Switt , had dealings with the Mint in the 1930s and was twice investigated over his coin holdings . A jury in 2012 sided with the government . However , the appeals court returned the coins to the Langbords because US officials had not responded within a 90-day limit to the family 's seized-property claim , filed in about 2004 . Family lawyer Barry Berke said : 'Congress clearly intended for there to be limits on the government 's ability to seek forfeiture of citizens ' property , and today 's ruling reaffirms that those limits are real and wo n't be excused when the government violates them . ' Langbord , who 's in her mid-80s , worked in her father 's store on Jeweler 's Row for most of her life . Her sons , entertainment lawyer Roy Langbord , of New York City , and David Langbord , of Virginia Beach , Virginia , joined her in the legal fight . Nearly half a million of the coins were minted in 1933 , though almost all were melted and a surviving coin sold for $ 7.6million in 2002 . The coins were never released to the public after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt switched the US off the gold standard . They do not plan to comment on the ruling and have not decided whether the coins will be sold , Berke said . Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens designed the Double Eagle with a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other . One Double Eagle , once owned by King Farouk of Egypt , sold in 2002 for $ 7.6 million , then a record for a coin . Its later owner , a London coin dealer once jailed by the US over it , split the proceeds with the US in a deal brokered by Berke . The Langbords offered the government a similar split but were rebuffed . The family had taken the coins to the Secret Service in Philadelphia to have them examined , Berke said . A coin that was that was once owned by King Farouk of Egypt ( left ) fetched millions thirteen years ago . The Langbords brought their coins into the government for authentication , but the valuables were seized . 'They authenticated the coins and said , 'Thank you very much . We will now be keeping them , '' he said . The Mint struck nearly a half-million of the Double Eagles in Philadelphia in 1933 but never released them after President Franklin D. Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard and prohibited using the gold coins as currency . The money makers in Philadelphia sent all of their gold coins to be melted in 1937 , according to Bloomberg . The . 1933 'Double Eagle ' was dreamed up by President Roosevelt ’ s distant . cousin , Theodore , who had commissioned the sculptor Augustus . Saint-Gaudens to re-design the $ 20 gold coin in the early 1900s . Teddy Roosevelt wanted an American coin that matched the beauty of the ancient Greek ones . The last run of nearly 500,000 coins were never released , and it was thought they were all melted down for scrap . In industry speak , an 'eagle ' is $ 10 , hence the term 'double eagle ' for the $ 20 1933 examples . While prosecutors argued to jurors in 2011 that Switt must have stolen the coins with help from a Mint insider , Berke said he could have traded his scrap gold for them . Alison Frankel , a journalist who wrote a history of the 1933 Double Eagles , told the New York Times that Berke had an 'amazing accomplishment ' by making the government prove that no coins could have possible gotten out of the mint legally . She said that the government attorneys decided not to prosecute Switt when they learned about his possible involvement in the 1940s because the statute of limitations had passed . Robert W Hoge , curator of North American coins and currency at the American Numismatic Society , said that federal authorities had been 'fanatical ' about finding the existing coins . The US Department of Justice said it was reviewing its options after Friday 's ruling . A Treasury spokeswoman had no comment . Switt , who died in 1990 , admitted to the Secret Service in 1944 that he had possessed and sold a set of nine other Double Eagles , which were recovered and destroyed . The surviving Farouk coin is believed to have been a 10th coin from that batch . The Mint sent a pair of 1933 Double Eagles to the Smithsonian Institution for its US coin collection .
Joan Langbord , in her mid-80s , and sons win back ten thousand dollar Eagles . they had brought rare coins to Secret Service when they were young . coins from Langbord 's family Israel Switt had been in a lock box until 2003 . Very few of the $ 20 coins exist because he ordered US off gold standard . Government said Switt stole them , though he may have traded for them .