A California couple who found a stash of buried gold coins valued at $10 million may not be so lucky after all. 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 San Francisco Chronicle's website reported that a search of the Haithi Trust Digital Library provided by Northern California fishing guide Jack Trout, who is also a historian and collector of rare coins, turned up the news of the theft.
WATCH: $10M Gold Coins May Be Linked to Heist
The California couple, who have not been identified, spotted the edge of an old can on a path they had hiked many times before several months ago. Poking at the can was the first step in uncovering a buried treasure of rare coins estimated to be worth $10 million.
"It was like finding a hot potato," the couple told coin expert Don Kagin from Kagin's, Inc. The couple hired the president of Kagin's, Inc. and Holabird-Kagin Americana, a western Americana dealer and auctioneer, to represent them.
The coins are mostly uncirculated and in mint condition, and they add up in face value to $27,000. "Those two facts are a match of the gold heist in 1900 from the San Francisco Mint," the newspaper reported.
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 turn of the century at the San Francisco Mint."
Mint spokesman Adam Stump issued this statement when contacted today by ABC News: "We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA's jurisdiction: http://www.archives.gov/."
Last week, when news of the stash first broke, coin dealer Kagin spoke about the rarity of such a find.
"Since 1981, people have been coming to us with one or two coins they find 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," Kagin 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 Kagin.
WATCH: $10M Gold-Coin Surprise Uncovered in Calif.
"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.
"Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition," said Kagin told ABCNews.com.
He said that the couple plan to sell most of the coins, but before they do, they are "loaning some to the American Numismatic Association for its National Money Show, which opens Thursday in Atlanta."
"Some of the rarest coins could fetch as much as $1 million apiece," said Kagin. He also said 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 the arts 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.
Kagin and his colleague David McCarthy, senior numismatist and researcher at Kagin's, met with the couple last April, two months after the hoard was found.
When McCarthy and Kagin told the couple that their bonanza 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."
Thar's gold in them thar cans: One of the eight cans discovered by a California couple. They were stuffed with gold coins minted in the 1800s. The cache's estimated value: $10 million.
It was announced recently that an anonymous California couple discovered $10 million in gold coins buried on their property, but the San Francisco Chronicle reports that new information lends credence to the theory that the coins come from an inside-job heist from the San Francisco Mint over 100 years ago.
The coins were in chronological order, indicating that they were likely uncirculated, and one of the coins was missing "In God We Trust," which historian Jack Trout tells the Chronicle indicates it was a private coin created by someone within the mint — and that it may even been created in response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
However, the Chronicle previously reported that there's a problem with the mint theory — the coins range in years over decades, which would make it unlikely they came from a single heist, and there also weren't any coins from the years immediately preceding the heist. But a San Francisco Mint detective told the Chronicle that there were vaults where coins that weren't put into circulation were kept, so anything is possible.
Still, Mint spokesman Adam Stump said Tuesday that the government has done its research and can't link the couple's coins to that theft, the Associated Press reports, so they may be home-free in their plans to sell most of the coins off.
Rare coin dealer Don Kagin, who represents the couple, says they think someone in the mining industry once occupied their land and squirreled away the coins over time, according to the Associated Press.
A lucky Californian couple found $10 million (€7.31 million) worth of gold coins buried in their back garden. The husband and wife discovered the gold stash while walking their dogs on their property near Sacramento.
They found 1,427 gold coins
, dated from 1847 to 1894, probably the most valuable treasure ever unearthed in America.
, dated from 1847 to 1894, probably the most valuable treasure ever unearthed in America.
The couple stumbled across the gold coins from the mid-19th century last February on their rural property in Gold Country, as reported by Kagin’s, the numismatic firm that helped the anonymous finders evaluate the coins.
Gold Country is a region in the central and northeastern part of California, near Sacramento and Sierra Nevada, famous for its mineral deposits and gold mines, that attracted waves of immigrants. The gold rush began there in 1849.
USA Today informs that the rare coins were buried in eight metal cans in the shadow of an old tree. Almost all of them are in uncirculated, mint condition, according to David Hall, co-founder ofProfessional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana.
Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana.
The collection includes $5, $10 and $20 denomination coins, some of them being extremely rare. The majority are $20 liberty head pieces minted in San Francisco. The face value of the pieces ascends to $28,000 (€20,500), but due to their rareness, coin experts say they could sell at auction for $1million (€731,740) a piece.
“This is the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What's really significant about this find is that this treasure combines a great quantity of pristine coins along with a great human interest story,” said coin dealer Don Kagin.
The unique treasure has been dubbed “Saddle Ridge Hoard” because it was discovered near a hill called by the anonymous couple Saddle Ridge.
The middle-aged couple decided to remain anonymous so as to avoid treasure hunters destroying their property in search for further gold stashes.
Given that no one knows who put the coins into the ground, the lucky couple gets to keep the treasure, according to the quasi-legal concept “Finders, keepers.” They plan to sell most of them on Amazon and use the money to pay off bills and make donations to “people in our community who are hungry and don't have enough to eat,” as reported by USA Today.
Some of the gold pieces will be on display at the upcoming American Numismatic Association National Money Show, which will be held in Atlanta from February 27 until March 1, 2014.
One of the six decaying metal canisters filled with 1800s-era U.S. gold coins unearthed in California by two people who want to remain anonymous. The value of the "Saddle Ridge Hoard" treasure trove is estimated at $10 million or more.
A Sierra Nevada couple found 19th century gold coins in cans in the ground worth ten million dollars.
A can half-submerged in dirt caught the eye of the couple, who dug it out with a stick and found it full of dirty discsSome of the buried cans that contained the gold coins were displayed at Kagin's Thursday February 20, 2014 in Tiburon, Calif. A fortune in 19th century gold coins found in the Gold Country of California will soon be for sale on Amazon and to serious collectors by the numismatics experts at Kagin's.
Kagin's senior numismatist David J. McCarthy goes through a portion of the coins Thursday February 20, 2014 in Tiburon, Calif. A fortune in 19th century gold coins found in the Gold Country of California will soon be for sale on Amazon and to serious collectors by the numismatics experts at Kagin's.
Members of the staff at Kagin's showed the buried cans that contained the coins and the stick used to dig them up Thursday February 20, 2014 in Tiburon, Calif. A fortune in 19th century gold coins found in the Gold Country of California will soon be for sale on Amazon and to serious collectors by the numismatics experts at Kagin's.
Kagin's specialists had the coins carefully cleaned and placed in acrylic cases for safe keeping Thursday February 20, 2014 in Tiburon, Calif. A fortune in 19th century gold coins found in the Gold Country of California will soon be for sale on Amazon and to serious collectors by the numismatics experts at Kagin's.
David J. McCarthy of Kagin's reaches for the stick that was used to dig up the cans full of gold coins, also shown, Thursday February 20, 2014 in Tiburon, Calif. A fortune in 19th century gold coins found in the Gold Country of California will soon be for sale on Amazon and to serious collectors by the numismatics experts at Kagin's
They weren't just discs.
A little brushing revealed nearly perfectly preserved $20 gold coins with liberty head designs on the front, dated from the 1890s. They ran back to the same spot, and when they were done digging, they'd found a total of eight cans containing 1,427 coins - with a face value of $27,980.
A total of 1,373 were $20 coins, 50 were $10 coins and four were $5 coins. They were dated from 1847 to 1894, and after sprucing up they shone like, well, gold - which fortunately never corrodes. About a third of the coins were in pristine condition, having never been circulated for spending. Most were minted in San Francisco.
"It was a very surreal moment. It was very hard to believe at first," the man said in an interview taped by the rare-coin dealer he eventually consulted to make sense of the find. "I thought any second an old miner with a mule was going to appear."
Staying secret
The couple are keeping their identities and location secret for many reasons, the main one being to prevent treasure hunters from ripping up their land with backhoes. But they've allowed coin dealer Don Kagin of Tiburon, who helped evaluate some of the biggest sunken treasure finds in history, to offer the collection up for sale.
It's dubbed the Saddle Ridge Hoard, after the spot on the couple's property where it was found. The collection is expected to sell for at least $10 million, either as a whole or in pieces, based on the evaluated condition of the coins.
"You hear all those Wild West stories of buried treasure, and you think they're fantasies - well here, this one really did happen," Kagin said the other day as he and his senior numismatist, David McCarthy, laid out dozens of the coins and cans for inspection at their office. "And what is almost unbelievable about this collection is what pristine condition so many of them are in."
According to "American Coin Treasures and Hoards," the bible of buried treasure finds, the biggest hoard of gold coins dug up before Saddle Ridge was a collection found by construction workers in Jackson, Tenn., in 1985. It had a face value of $4,500 and sold for $1 million.
Kagin and McCarthy met with the couple in April, two months after the hoard was dug up and the inevitable attorneys had gotten involved.
"The first thing the family did after finding all the cans was rebury them in a cooler under their woodpile," McCarthy said. "They were terrified and had to think about what to do."
'Mind-blowing' discovery
He said when he first sat with the couple to examine the find, "the family had cut little squares into some foam and put 18 of the coins in the squares in a cigar box. I pulled out the first coin, and it was from 1890. It had dirt on it, but when I looked close, it dawned on me just exactly what it was.
"I almost fell out of my chair. It was mind-blowing. I was literally sitting with the most amazing buried treasure I've ever heard of."
He spent the next several months restoring the coins - a job so consuming that "my fingers bled," McCarthy said. It then took until this month for them all to be appraised and readied for sale.
Some dream of roaming the Earth to hunt buried treasure. One Sierra Nevada couple didn't have to go that far. They dug it up in their backyard - about $10 million worth, in 19th century U.S. gold coins stuffed into rusty cans.
It's believed to the biggest hoard of gold coins ever unearthed in the United States. And it's going on sale soon.
The bonanza emerged last year as the man and woman were walking their dog on their property in the Gold Country and noticed the top of a decaying canister poking out of the ground.
They dug it out with a stick, took it to their house and opened it up. Inside was what looked like a batch of discs covered in dirt from holes rotted through the can.
About 90 percent of the coins will post on Amazon.com's Collectibles site, probably in May, Kagin said. The rest he will sell privately, "to well-heeled collectors who desire the finest and the rarest."
The oddest of the bunch are an 1866 $20 coin minted in San Francisco without the words "In God We Trust" on the back - the words were added to those coins, called "Double Eagles," later that year - and an 1849 $5 coin struck in the short-lived Dahlonega, Ga., mint.
Professional Coin Grading Service of Irvine, one of the world's foremost coin-assessment firms, evaluated the hoard and certified that 13 of the coins are either the finest-preserved known examples of their kind, or tied for that rating.
Enduring mystery
How all that cash came to be underground in the Northern California mountains is a mystery. Was it loot from a stagecoach robbery? Some miser's life savings?
"The family and the attorneys researched who might have put them there, and they came up with nothing," Kagin said. "The nearest we can guess is that whoever left the coins might have been involved in the mining industry." He also reckons the cans were buried at various times.
However or wherever they were found, the collection is going to rock the coin-collecting world, said Donn Pearlman, spokesman for the national Professional Numismatists Guild. Kagin will offer a presale glimpse of some of the coins at the American Numismatic Association's National Money Show, a three-day event that starts in Atlanta on Thursday.
"It is always amazing when even a single gold coin is found, let alone more than 1,000 of them that date back to the Gold Rush era," Pearlman said. "This will cause a tremendous amount of excitement."
The couple, who are in their 40s and are self-employed, told Kagin and McCarthy they want to donate some of the proceeds to the homeless and hungry in their area. They also plan to keep a few coins as keepsakes.
"Like a lot of people lately, we've had some financial trials," the man told Kagin in the recorded interview. "I feel extreme gratitude that we can keep our beloved property."
The couple didn't sound like they were suddenly going to live large, though. "We love our lives as they are," the woman said.
Pieces of history
Kagin, whose 81-year-old outfit is the nation's oldest family-owned numismatic firm, said he's planning to send buyers a write-up of the collection's place in Gold Country history. He did similar research when consulting on the gold chunks and coins fetched from the record-setting shipwrecks of the steamships Central America ($130 million value, in 1987) and Republic ($60 million value, in 2003).
"This is not just a bunch of coins found in a bunch of cans," Kagin said. "Coins like this are art, and some of the best artifacts we have of characteristics of our society.
"You look at these coins," he said, gazing at a dozen of the "Double Eagles" spread before him, "and you see history. They are the Gold Rush, murders in the mountains, buried treasures, the Wild West, everything of that time.
"And it's all right here before you. You can hold it in your hands. Amazing."
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their Gold Country property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $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 about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $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, he 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 armed with metal detectors.
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 of the coins 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 Thursday in Atlanta.
What makes their find particularly valuable, McCarthy said, is that almost all of the coins are in near-perfect condition. That means that whoever put them into the ground likely socked them away as soon as they were put into circulation.
Because paper money was illegal in California until the 1870s, he added, it's extremely rare to find any coins from before that of such high quality.
"It wasn't really until the 1880s that you start seeing coins struck in California that were kept in real high grades of preservation," he said.
The coins, in $5, $10 and $20 denominations, were stored more or less in chronological order, McCarthy said, with the 1840s and 1850s pieces going into one canister until it was filed, then new coins going into the next one and the next one after that. The dates and the method indicated that whoever put them there was using the ground as their personal bank and that they weren't swooped up all at once in a robbery.
Although most of the coins were minted in San Francisco, one $5 gold piece came from as far away as Georgia.
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 and the coins were found along a path the couple had walked for years. On the day they found them last spring, the woman had bent over to examine an old rusty can that erosion had caused to pop slightly out of the ground.
"Don't be above bending over to check on a rusty can," he said she told him.
They are located on a section of the property the couple nicknamed Saddle Ridge, and Kagin is calling the find the Saddle Ridge Hoard. He believes it could be the largest such discovery in U.S. history.
One of the largest previous finds of gold coins was $1 million worth uncovered by construction workers in Jackson, Tenn., in 1985. More than 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of a Reno, Nev., 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.
The couple shouldn’t panic yet though. After all, the theory is still exactly that — just a theory.
In a statement to ABC News, San Francisco Mint spokesperson Adam Stump said: “We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA’s jurisdiction: http://www.archives.gov/.”
A California couple on their daily walk with their dog, a walk they've taken for years, discovered what may be the greatest buried treasures ever found in the U.S.
The cache of rare Gold Rush-era coins is worth more than $10 million, a currency firm representing the pair said on Tuesday.
The 1,400 gold pieces, dating to the mid- to late 1800s and still in nearly mint condition, were discovered buried in eight decaying metal cans on the couple's land in April, said coin expert David McCarthy of currency firm Kagin's.
"We've seen shipwrecks in the past where thousands of gold coins were found in very high grade, but a buried treasure of this sort is unheard of," McCarthy said. "I've never seen this face value in North America, and you never see coins in the condition we have here."
Donald Kagin, president of Kagin's Inc., a numismatic firm that specializes in U.S. gold coins, announced the discovery. The company represents the couple, who want to remain anonymous for fear treasure hunters will descend on their property in Northern California's so-called Gold Country, named after the state's 1849 Gold Rush.
The couple, identified only as John and Mary, had been walking their dog when they came across a rusty metal can sticking out of the ground and dug it out.
The rare and perfectly preserved U.S. gold coins date from 1847 to 1894 and have a face value of more than $28,000. They could sell for more than $10 million.
The previous largest reported find of buried gold treasure in the U.S. had a face value of $4,500. It was discovered by construction workers in 1985 in Jackson, Tenn., and eventually sold for around $1 million.
McCarthy said Kagin's will sell most of the coins on Amazon for the couple and that a sampling will be displayed at the upcoming American Numismatic Association show in Atlanta later this month.
The "Saddle Ridge Hoard," as it’s being called, includes the 1866-S No Motto Double Eagle valued at around $1 million.
The couple told Kagin they couldn’t believe they had made such a big discovery and were grateful for it.
“I thought any second an old miner with a mule was going to appear,” John said in an interview posted on the company's website.
"It was like finding a wonderful hot potato," Mary added. "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 coins were authenticated, graded and certified by Professional Coin Grading Service in Irvine, Kagin said.
The $20 gold pieces appeared to have been new when they went into the ground and had suffered little damage from being in the soil for so long.
McCarthy said the couple wisely refrained from cleaning the coins themselves and brought a sampling of them to him in little baggies, still covered in soil.
"I picked up one of bags. It was an 1890 $20 gold piece. It was covered in dirt," McCarthy said, recalling when he first saw one of the gold pieces. "An area of the coin was exposed and the metal looked as if it had just been struck yesterday."
His company took what became known as the "Saddle Ridge Hoard" to an independent coin-grading service, which found that it was comprised of nearly 1,400 $20 gold pieces, 50 $10 gold pieces and four $5 gold pieces.
"The Saddle Ridge Hoard discovery is one of the most amazing numismatic stories I've ever heard," said Don Willis, president of Professional Coin Grading Service. "This will be regarded as one of the best stories in the history of our hobby."
The couple said they plan to keep some of the coins and sell others with the intention of donating part of the proceeds to charity.
More importantly, they said, they will use the money to hold on to their home. They did not explain further.
"Whatever answers you seek, they might be right at home," Mary said. "The answer to our difficulties was right there under our feet for years."
"Don’t be above bending over to check on a rusty can."
The California couple who found $10 million in gold coins buried in their backyard last year may be forced to give up the entire stash as the coins may have been stolen from the U.S. Mint in 1900. If true, that means the coins are the property of the U.S. government.
As TheBlaze recently reported, the unidentified couple already learned that they would have to pay about half of the $10 million value of the coins in federal and state income taxes. Now they could potentially walk away with nothing after their monumental find.
The San Francisco Chronicle reportedly obtained an old news article from California fishing guide Jack Trout, who is also a historian and collector of rare coins. The news clipping from Jan. 1, 1900, describes a gold heist from the San Francisco Mint, which some think just might explain the discovery of the $10 million in coins.
More from the report:
In addition, the coins were largely in chronological order, which indicates they were unused. (There are some problems with this theory, though, according to The Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan in an article summarizing the various hypotheses). Kevin noted that one-third of them were unused, and the chronological order was that they spanned nearly 50 years in date.
New information, which adds credibility that the heist was an inside job at the Mint, became available late Monday afternoon from research by historian Jack Trout: An 1866 Liberty $20 gold piece — which did not include the words “In God We Trust” — was part of the haul, a coin that alone is worth more than $1 million.
“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 said. “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 turn of the century at the San Francisco Mint.”
The couple shouldn’t panic yet though. After all, the theory is still exactly that — just a theory.
In a statement to ABC News, San Francisco Mint spokesperson Adam Stump said: “We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA’s jurisdiction: http://www.archives.gov/.”