An auction featuring a $15,000 coin features a box containing rare gold coins that were found by two Californians while walking their dog. The coins ranged in date from 1847 to 1894 and cost $11 million. An 1874 $20 double eagle that typically sells for $4,250 was auctioned off at the Old San Francisco Mint and went for $15,000 instead.
When a California couple was out walking their dog last year, they discovered 1,427 American gold coins from the Gold Rush era in their yard. The $11 million collection is currently up for sale.
The majority of the remaining 1,400 coins, according to Don Kagin, whose company is in charge of the sale, were put up for sale on Amazon.com and Kagins.com after the auction.
The couple, whose names Kagin withheld, discovered them last year on their remote Northern California home, hidden beneath the shade of a tree.
This photo, which was provided by the folks who discovered the Saddle Ridge Hoard via Kagin’s, Inc., shows one of the six corroding metal jars that two people who prefer to remain nameless found in California that were filled with gold coins from the 1800s. Here are five details regarding coins and their history: Why do they hold such value?
It’s incredibly rare to find any coins from before the 1870s, according to experts, because paper money wasn’t permitted in California until then.
The majority of the coins are also in mint condition because they were stored away seemingly as soon as they were produced. Don Kagin, a numismatist in charge of the sale and marketing of the coins, appraised them.
Who Found them?
Kagin says the couple — a middle-aged husband and wife — does not want to be identified in part to avoid a gold rush on their rural Northern California property by modern-day prospectors.
They discovered the coins in eight cans buried in the shadow of an old tree on the property.
They plan to keep a few of the coins themselves and use the money from the rest to pay off bills and donate to local charities. Money from Tuesday’s auction will benefit the effort to turn the Old Mint into a museum.
Where did the coins Come From?
Most of the coins were minted at the San Francisco Mint, according to Kagin. It’s not clear, however, who put them in the ground or how they were obtained, though theories have abounded.
Kagin says people have linked the coins to stagecoach bandit Black Bart, outlaw Jesse James and theft at the San Francisco Mint, but none of the theories has panned out.
What is in the Collection?
The treasure consists of four $5 gold pieces, fifty $10 gold pieces, and 1,373 $20 double eagles. Among the coins that will be on display in the crown jewel of the collection — an 1866-S No Motto $20 gold piece valued at more than $1 million.
How Does this Discovery Compare to Other Coin Find?
Kagin calls this coin to find the largest such discovery in U.S. history. One of the largest previous finds of gold coins was uncovered by construction workers in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1985 and valued at $1 million.
More than 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of a Reno, Nevada, man who died in 1974 and were later sold intact for $7.3 million.
Gold coins and ingots said to be worth as much as $130 million were recovered in the 1980s from the wreck of the SS Central America.
But historians knew roughly where that gold was because the ship went down off the coast of North Carolina during a hurricane in 1857.
Source: archaeology-world.com
