I was doing Underworld in Hard Mode tonight, something dropped me gold stormbow, YAAAAY, and then I see 14-28... Level 30 foes can drop non-max golds? Even UW in Normal Mode should drop everything max.. Anyways here's the screen...
I have hidden the names, except Boris' because he said I can keep his, he wants to advertise here..
Non-Max golds from HM?
revelation
garethporlest18
That's the random drop list for ya.
masta_yoda
that happens randomly all the time, 3 times from z chest gave me unmaxed golds
DarkFlame
HM isn't a magic 1337 loot button. Its happens, just like you can get crap from the UW end chests as well. The only guaranteed max items are greens(other then the starter ones) and they are junk already.
- Tain -
It happens... also, if you're censoring names you should probably cover the ones in the background, not just the party list 
revelation
It was 2 am, so I forgot, it won't hurt anyone anyways.. Well, ok, at least I won't expect everything max in HM in the future.
Ku Ku
If you think about it the whites, blues and purples that drop in HM arent always max either, so you shouldnt really expect golds to be :P (Although i'd say that you were quite unlucky- i seem to only get crappy golds in "low level" HM areas (i.e. ascalon) which kinda makes sense to me :P
Baird
Ya its all just random drops. Nothing you can do about it.
miskav
As said before, it's really random drops, but yes. It sucks when that happens.