One of the things large gold holders did after the 1933 order was to develop private banks in foreign countries, like Grand Cayman, Bermuda, and other stash house countries. The reason why was that at the time the Dollar was not worth much of anything beyond the US borders but gold was. Panama up until Jimmy Carter had a massive gold only bank that serviced the Panama Canal trade zone. Ships could roll into the canal and sell their cargo to whoever had the metal at the time. Panama City got rich as hell and should be like Singapore today but socialists got in there and screwed that up.

As for the little old ladies, they got around the gold confiscation by having their gold coins turned into jewellery which could be traded, other coins were relinquished to being called collectibles which were legal. Those collectibles strangely followed the price of gold. There were also a lot of boating accidents, like guns people often carry their gold on boats.