PHILADELPHIA -- A family is suing the U.S. Mint, saying it illegally seized 10 gold coins that are among the rarest and most valuable in the world that the family found among a dead relative's possessions.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, accuses the Mint of violating the Constitution and breaking federal forfeiture laws by refusing to return the 1933 "double eagle" coins to the family after it handed the coins over to have their authenticity confirmed.

Plaintiffs Joan S. Langbord and her sons, Roy and David, are seeking the immediate return of the coins, said their attorney, Barry H. Berke.

Defendants named in the suit include the Mint, the Treasury Department, and officials in those agencies.

A Mint spokesman declined to comment, saying that the Mint had not yet been officially served.

Double eagles were first struck in 1850. They are so named because they had a face value of $20, twice the amount of gold coins known as eagles.

The coins, which Mint officials have said are so rare that their value could not be calculated, feature a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. There were 445,500 minted in 1933, but they were melted down before being released into circulation when President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard.

A handful escaped, however. Two were deliberately set aside and are at the Smithsonian Institution. The Mint has said any others in existence were obtained illegally, but agreed after a lengthy court battle to allow one of the coins to be sold at auction in 2002 for $7.59 million _ the highest price ever paid for a coin _ after its owner agreed to split the proceeds with the Mint.

Langbord, who discovered the coins in 2003 in a safe deposit box belonging to her deceased father, longtime Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt, was aware of that case and contacted the Mint to disclose the coins' existence and "attempt to reach an amicable resolution of any issues that might be raised," the lawsuit states.

She handed the coins over to the Mint to be authenticated, but the Mint refused to give them back, saying they must have been stolen from the Philadelphia Mint in the early 1930s because they had never been in circulation, according to the lawsuit.

Switt, who died in 1990, told Secret Service agents in 1944 that he had possessed and sold nine 1933 double eagles, according to the Mint. All were tracked down by the government and destroyed between 1944 and 1952.

"The Mint's lawless position is that by merely claiming the coins were somehow removed from the Mint unlawfully in the 1930s, they can take the Langbords' property without proving it in a court of law," Berke said.

The coins at the center of the lawsuit were briefly displayed this summer for an American Numismatic Association's convention in Denver. They have been secured at the U.S. Bullion Depository in Fort Knox, Ky.

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