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Couple strike it rich with US$10m gold coin find
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A California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: US$10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.
Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them.
Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to more than US$28,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly US$1 million apiece.
“I don’t like to say once-in-a-lifetime for anything, but you don’t get an opportunity to handle this kind of material, a treasure like this, ever,” said veteran numismatist Don Kagin, who is representing the finders. “It’s like they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Kagin, whose family has been in the rare-coin business for 81 years, would say little about the couple other than that they are husband and wife, are middle-aged and have lived for several years on the rural property where the coins were found. They have no idea who put them there, Kagin said.
The pair are choosing to remain anonymous, Kagin said, in part to avoid a renewed gold rush to their property by modern-day prospectors.
They also don’t want to be treated any differently, said David McCarthy, chief numismatist for Kagin Inc of Tiburon.
“Their concern was this would change the way everyone else would look at them, and they’re pretty happy with the lifestyle they have today,” he said.
They plan to put most up for sale through Amazon while holding onto a few keepsakes. They’ll use the money to pay off bills and quietly donate to local charities, Kagin said.
Before they sell them, they are loaning some to the American Numismatic Association for its National Money Show, which opens today in Atlanta.
The coins, in US$5, US$10 and US$20 denominations, were stored more or less in chronological order, McCarthy said. The dates and the method indicated that whoever put them there was using the ground as their personal bank.
Kagin and McCarthy would say little about the couple’s property or its ownership history, other than it’s in a sprawling hilly area of Gold Country — as the region that was the site of the 1849 Gold Rush is known.
The coins were found along a path the couple had walked for years. On the day they found them last spring, the woman bent over to examine a rusty can that erosion had caused to pop slightly out of the ground.
They were on part of the property the couple nicknamed Saddle Ridge, and Kagin calls the find the Saddle Ridge Hoard. He says it could be the largest such discovery in US history.
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