Last Updated on January 22, 2025
No one can definitively say exactly how much gold was confiscated in 1933 as no record was ever kept.
However, SD Bullion has run the numbers and estimates that 2,665 tonnes was confiscated.
They arrived at this figure by looking at how much gold was melted down by the government between 1933 and 1939.
When compared to the total quantity of gold coins circulating in the country, they estimate that this figure is only 27.44% of the total gold stock.
Interesting.
That means that 72.56% of the nation’s gold was not handed in as required by Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order.
This lands very close to Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s figure in the very famous book A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960.
They say 20-25% of circulating gold was handed in.
The Confiscation Wasn’t Really A Confiscation
Most people who are interested in the history of hard money know about Executive Order 6102 that stipulated American’s hand in their gold in exchange for paper dollars.
But what’s not so well understood is the widespread lack of compliance by the American public.
The Executive Order relied on the voluntary goodwill of the people. Those that handed in their gold did so out of a sense of patriotism and they trusted the government’s assurances that this was good and necessary.
Remember, everyone held gold back in those days. Not just people who think deeply about money and the role of the state, like Bitcoiners.
So it’s not surprising. What is surprising is actually how few people did what they were told.
The government did not apply force in an attempt to confiscate people’s gold.
For most people, quiet non-compliance worked perfectly well.
SchiffGold explains:
“In fact, the feds never made any concerted effort to confiscate gold by force. They never went door to door looking for gold. While subsequent legislation imposed a fine of $10,000 or 10 years in prison for hoarding gold, few people were ever prosecuted. And virtually all of those prosecutions involved people who tried to sell or move large quantities of gold, or who got caught up in sting operations. Meanwhile, many “lawbreakers” quietly held onto their gold and nobody was the wiser. In fact, to this day, there is a massive secondary market of pre-1933 gold coins. If the government had truly confiscated all of the gold, these coins would no longer be in private hands.”
So we can’t even really call it a confiscation, as it so often is.
SchiffGold calls it a “nationalisation” but not a “confiscation in the true sense of the word.”
Why Does The 1933 Gold Confiscation Matter?
Some people worry a lot about whether or not gold might get “confiscated” again and whether that is a risk in holding it.
While you can never say never, I don’t think it is a significant risk.
Firstly, because we are not on the gold standard. Therefore the Fed can devalue the dollar any time it wants with the tools it currently has. FDR needed gold out of private hands in order to devalue the dollar when there was a gold standard.
Secondly, the government never actually enforced the “confiscation.” If they didn’t do it then, do you think they would do it now?
The other reason it is worth understanding how little gold the government actually got is that there is a myth that this “confiscation” is how the US built her stockpile of gold and became the world’s gold superpower.
In fact, the USA amassed much of its stockpile of gold well after the “confiscation.”
The USA’s gold position was built steadily over the first half of the 20th century as her economic power grew. Under the gold standard when you have a trade surplus, gold flows into your nation. If you have a trade deficit gold flows out.
The US ran trade surpluses and built a steady gold position. This accelerated during World War Two as the nation received minimal damage and emerged as the world’s economic superpower, while the world’s other major economies all faltered. As this occurred, gold flowed in, peaking at over 20,000 tonnes several years after the conclusion of World War Two.
So it certainly wasn’t FDR’s actions in 1933 that built America’s gold reserve.
Conclusion
It is impossible to give an exact figure of how much gold was confiscated. But SD Bullion and Milton Friedman agree that it is somewhere in the range of 20-30% of the nation’s gold stock.
Which works out at about 2,665 tonnes.
Arguably this wasn’t a “confiscation” in the true sense of the word, since the government did not enforce the remaining holders of gold to hand it over.
They relied on patriotism and goodwill on behalf of the public and, interestingly, they didn’t get that much of it.
A huge amount of people showed they would rather hold their gold illegally than hand it in as directed.
Sources
Friedman, Milton, and Anna J Schwartz. 1971. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Image Credits
Executive Order 6102 is in the public domain
