In California, a group of people who stumbled upon a $10 million cache of hidden gold coins may not be as lucky as they thought. The coins may have been stolen from the U.S. Mint in 1900 and thus be the property of the government, according to a published report. The unidentified California group settled the debate over an old can on a path they had hiked many times before several months ago. Picking at the can was the first step in uncovering a buried treasure of rare coins estimated to be worth $10 million.
“It felt like discovering a hidden gem,” the cool-toned coin expert Dan Kagin expressed from Kagin’s, Inc. The expert is the president of Kagin’s, Inc. and Holabird-Kagin Americana, a western Americana dealer and auctioneer, to represent them.
The coins are mostly unique and in mint condition, adding up to a face value of $27,000. “These two facts are a match of the gold heist in 1900 from the San Francisco Mint,” the news report stated.
Jack Trout told the paper that an 1866 Liberty $20 gold piece without the words “In God We Trust” was part of the buried stash, and the coin may fetch over $1 million at auction because it’s so rare.
“This was someone’s private coin, created by the mint manager or someone with access to the inner workings of the Old Granite Lady (San Francisco Mint),” Trout told the newspaper. “It was likely created in revenge for the assassination of Lincoln the previous year (April 14, 1865). I don’t believe that coin ever left The Mint until the robbery. For it to show up as part of the treasure find links it directly to that inside job at the heart of the currency at the San Francisco Mint.”
Mint spokesperson Adam Stump made a statement to ABC News saying that there is no information connecting the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Agencies investigating the coins from the San Francisco Mint have been referred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. When news of the historic coin find broke, coin dealer Kagan spoke about the rarity of such a find.
Since 1981, people have been coming to us with one or two coins they found worth a few thousand dollars, but this is the first time we get someone with a whole cache of buried coins… It is a million to one chance, even harder than winning the lottery,” Kagan told ABCNews.com.
The couple is trying to remain anonymous after finding the five cans of coins last spring on their Tiburon property in northern California and conducted an interview with Kagan.
“I never would have thought we would have found something like this. However, in a weird way I feel like I have been preparing my whole life for it,” the couple said.
“I saw an old can sticking out of the ground on a trail that we had walked almost every day for many, many years. I was looking down in the right spot and saw the side of the can. I bent over to scrape some moss off and noticed that it had both ends on it,” they said.
It was the first of five cans to be unearthed, each packed with gold coins.
According to a report by ABC News, a collection of 1,427 coins dating from 1847 to 1894 in uncirculated mint condition is up for sale. The owner, Kagan, mentioned that he plans to sell most of the coins but before they do, they are showcasing some to the American Numismatic Association for its National Money Show in Atlanta held on Thursday.
“Some of the rarest coins could fetch as much as $1 million apiece,” stated Kagan. He also mentioned that they wish to sell 90 percent of the collection through Amazon.com and on the company’s website.
“We’d like to help other people with some of this money. There are people in our community who are hungry and don’t have enough to eat. We’ll also donate to charities and other overlooked causes. In a way, it has been good to have time between finding the coins and being able to sell them in order to prepare and adjust. It’s given us an opportunity to think about how to give back,” said the couple.
Kagan and his colleague David McCarthy, senior numismatist and researcher at Kagan’s, met with the couple last April, two months after the hoard was found.
When McCarthy and Kagan told the couple that their coins will be in the annals of numismatic stories for quite some time, the couple said, “It would have been quite a pity not to share the magnitude of our find. We want to keep the story of these coins intact for posterity.”
