Did FDR Confiscate Gold? Executive Order 6102 and Its Aftermath

Yes. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gold confiscation order required almost every person and business in the country to hand over their gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve, paying them a fixed $20.67 per troy ounce in paper currency. The order was Executive Order 6102, signed April 5, 1933, and the deadline to comply was May 1 of that year.¹ The prohibition on private ownership then lasted more than four decades.

What Executive Order 6102 Required

The order applied to every person, partnership, association, and corporation in the continental United States. All gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates had to be delivered to a Federal Reserve bank, a branch, or any member bank of the Federal Reserve System by May 1, 1933.¹

Roosevelt issued the order under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, a wartime statute that gave the executive branch power to regulate transactions in gold and silver coin, bullion, and currency.² A few months later, on August 28, 1933, he replaced 6102 with the more detailed Executive Order 6260, which added registration requirements and a formal licensing system for anyone with an approved reason to hold gold.³

Why Roosevelt Ordered the Gold Turned In

Bank failures across the early 1930s had destroyed public confidence in the financial system, and people were rushing to convert paper dollars into physical gold. That drained the reserves the Federal Reserve needed to back its currency. Under the law then in force, the Federal Reserve had to hold gold equal to 40 percent of the value of the dollars it circulated.⁴ As gold moved out of banks and into private hoards, the government’s ability to keep the money supply steady and support lending shrank.

The order framed private hoarding as the problem and pulled the metal back into the banking system.

What Gold You Could Legally Keep

The order did not sweep up every piece of gold in the country. Several categories stayed lawful in private hands:

Gold needed for industrial, professional, or artistic use. Dentists, jewelers, manufacturers, and artists could keep a reasonable working amount.¹
Up to $100 in gold coin and gold certificates per person, which at $20.67 per ounce came to about five troy ounces.¹
Rare and unusual coins with recognized special value to collectors. Under the later Executive Order 6260, coins minted before April 5, 1933, were generally considered collector items.³
Gold held under a Treasury license for approved industrial, professional, or artistic purposes.³

The target was gold held as savings or investment. Metal actively used in commerce and industry was mostly left alone.

What Owners Were Paid, and the Revaluation That Followed

People who delivered their gold received paper currency at the official fixed price of $20.67 per troy ounce, paid in Federal Reserve Notes or other legal tender.⁴

What happened next is why the episode is still argued about. After the metal had been collected, the Gold Reserve Act of January 1934 gave Roosevelt authority to reprice gold, and he raised the official price to $35.00 per troy ounce.⁵ That was a jump of roughly 70 percent and devalued the dollar against gold by about 40 percent. Anyone who had already turned in gold at $20.67 received nothing extra. The gap between the two prices became government profit.

Penalties and How Enforcement Actually Worked

On paper, the penalties were severe. A willful violation could bring a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both. Corporate officers, directors, and agents who knowingly participated in a violation faced the same exposure.¹

In practice, enforcement was uneven. The first prosecution brought directly under Executive Order 6102 was dismissed because a federal judge found the order should have been signed by the Secretary of the Treasury rather than the president under the underlying statute. Later cases proceeded under Executive Order 6260 and the Gold Reserve Act instead. Some individuals were prosecuted for selling coins without a license or for refusing to register their holdings, and one man was convicted of possessing 78 ounces of gold and sentenced to six months and a $500 fine. Broad, systematic prosecution of ordinary holders never happened.

How the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 Made It Permanent

On January 30, 1934, Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act, which converted the emergency measures into standing law. The act transferred ownership of all monetary gold in the country — coins, bullion, and the Federal Reserve’s own reserves — to the U.S. Treasury.⁵ The Federal Reserve no longer held physical gold as its own asset.

The act also ended the domestic gold standard. The Treasury and financial institutions could no longer redeem dollars for gold.⁵ Before 1934, a dollar holder could walk into a bank and exchange the note for a fixed amount of gold. After the act, gold served only to settle international accounts between governments.

Did the Supreme Court Uphold the Gold Program?

In practical terms, yes. In February 1935 the Court decided a group of challenges known as the Gold Clause Cases, all centered on whether Congress could void contract provisions that required payment in gold coin of a specified weight and fineness.

In Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., the Court upheld Congress’s power to eliminate gold clauses in private contracts, holding that private agreements cannot override the constitutional authority to regulate the currency.⁶ In Nortz v. United States, a holder of $106,300 in gold certificates argued he was owed gold worth over $170,000 at market prices; the Court ruled against him because he had no license to hold gold and would have been required to surrender any coin he received, so he suffered no actual loss.⁷

Perry v. United States went further on principle. The Court said Congress had exceeded its power by trying to void the gold clause in the government’s own bonds, calling the promise to pay in gold “the highest assurance the government can give, its plighted faith,” and pointing to the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that the validity of the public debt “shall not be questioned.”⁸ But the Court still denied the bondholder any additional money, again reasoning he could show no damages because he could not have kept the gold anyway.

The bottom line across all three cases: the gold program stood, and no plaintiff received a dollar more than what had been paid in paper.

When Americans Could Own Gold Again

Private gold ownership stayed illegal for more than 40 years. On December 31, 1974, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 11825, revoking the executive orders that had restricted gold ownership since 1933, including Executive Order 6260.⁹ Ford acted under Public Law 93-373, which Congress had passed earlier that year to repeal the prohibition.

Starting January 1, 1975, Americans could once again buy, sell, and hold gold bullion, coins, and certificates freely. No compensation was ever paid to former holders for the difference between the $20.67 they had received in 1933 and the market price four decades later, which by 1974 had climbed well above $150 per ounce.

1
The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 6102 – Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 50 USC Ch. 53 Trading With the Enemy
3
The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 6260 – Relating to the Hoarding, Export, and Earmarking of Gold Coin, Bullion, or Currency
4
Federal Reserve History. Roosevelt’s Gold Program
5
Federal Reserve History. Gold Reserve Act of 1934
6
LII / Legal Information Institute. Norman v. Baltimore and O.R. Co.
7
LII / Legal Information Institute. Nortz v. United States
8
LII / Legal Information Institute. Perry v. United States
9
The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 11825 – Revocation of Executive Orders Pertaining to the Regulation of the Acquisition of, Holding of, or Other Transactions in Gold