Free Republic

March 3, 2014 3:45PM As we predicted/requested on Friday, The Tulving Company has gone out of business, as of Monday morning. They are no longer answering their phones, and we have reliable information confirming that they are ceasing operations. This page will be updated as more information comes in. There is a lot of information on our old page about The Tulving Company. We hope to update this page with information about what will happen next. At this point, our best guess is that The Tulving Company will file for bankruptcy. Unfortunately, we believe that there will be little in...

Just before the bankruptcy of the Mt. Gox bitcoin digital-money (or virtual-currency) exchange, Japanese finance minister Taro Aso predicted the inevitable failure. “No one recognizes them as a real currency,” he told reporters. “I expected such a thing to collapse.” I totally agree with Mr. Aso. For weeks and weeks I have been tweeting and broadcasting that bitcoin is not real money. It is not a reliable medium of exchange, nor is it a reliable store of value. It has no central-bank regulation, network operations, or even centralized issuance. And because of its wild price fluctuations, bitcoin can never...

A California couple that discovered $10 million worth of gold coins last year will have to pay nearly half that amount in federal and state income tax, regardless of whether they sell the coins.

A judge has ruled that ten rare gold coins worth roughly $80 million belong to the U.S. government, not the family that possessed them, according to ABC News. In 2003 Joan Langbord and two other family members opened a safety deposit box that belonged to Langbord’s father, Philadelphia coin dealer Israel Switt, and found the valuable collection. When they asked the Philadelphia Mint to authenticate the find, the coins were apparently seized without compensation and taken to Fort Knox. The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle is “one of the most sought-after rarities in history,” according to Courthouse News. Originally valued at...

A California couple spotted the edge of an old can on a path they had hiked many times before. 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 Dr. Don Kagan 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. "Since 1981, people have been coming to us with one or two coins they find worth a few thousand dollars,...

LOS ANGELES – 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.

The mysterious haul of gold coins discovered by a Northern California couple while out walking their dog – and valued at $10 million – may well be a previously undiscovered bounty that an employee of the San Francisco Mint was convicted of stealing in 1901. The couple, who haven’t been named, stumbled across the haul of 1,427 rare, mint-condition gold coins, nearly all dating from 1847 to 1894, buried in the shadow of an old tree on their Gold Country property in February 2013. The face value of the Saddle Ridge Hoard, as they’ve called it, added up to about...

U.S. Government Reporting Requirements For Coin And Bullion Dealers There is much confusion and disinformation about the extent to which coin dealers are required to obtain customer information to keep on file and use in submitting reports to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or other government agencies. In some cases the confusion may be used to steer customers away from lower-margin bullion sales and towards the higher-margin coin sales, even though such items may be less suitable for the customer's purposes. I'll attempt to summarize some of the reporting topics herein, but for more helpful information, you can visit the...

The London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say. Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University's Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody's Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper. "The structure of the benchmark is...

One couple's gold find could mean a jackpot for the IRS. The Northern California couple that found $10 million worth of rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree on their property will likely owe about half the find's value whether they sell the gold or not. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the find is a taxable event under a 1969 federal court ruling that held a "treasure trove" is taxable the year it was discovered. "If you find and keep property that does not belong to you that has been lost or abandoned (treasure-trove),...

Treasure hunting enthusiasts weigh in on origins of couple's $10 million findThe mysterious haul of gold coins discovered by a Northern California couple while out walking their dog – and valued at $10 million – may well be a previously undiscovered bounty that an employee of the San Francisco Mint was convicted of stealing in 1901. The couple, who haven’t been named, stumbled across the haul of 1,427 rare, mint-condition gold coins, nearly all dating from 1847 to 1894, buried in the shadow of an old tree on their Gold Country property in February 2013. The face value of the...

A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their 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 more than $28,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece. [continued at link]

TIBURON (CBS SF) – A couple has made the buried treasure find of a lifetime – gold coins worth millions of dollars – on their property in Northern California. A cache of more than 1,400 rare U.S. gold coins, stored in decaying metal cans and buried near an old tree on the property, was discovered as the couple were taking their dog on a daily walk. The estimated value is believed to be in excess of $10 million and may be the most valuable hoard of gold coins unearthed in North America, according to veteran numismatist Don Kagin. Kagin, president...

<p>A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.</p> <p>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.</p>

In order for our current level of debt-fueled prosperity to continue, the rest of the world must continue to use our dollars to trade with one another and must continue to buy our debt at ridiculously low interest rates. Of course the number one foreign nation that we depend on to participate in our system is China. China accounts for more global trade than anyone else on the planet (including the United States), and most of that trade is conducted in U.S. dollars. This keeps demand for our dollars very high, and it ensures that we can import massive quantities...

Meryl Davis and Charlie White became the first Americans to win the Olympic ice dance title with a sultry, spellbinding performance to Scheherazade at the Sochi Games on Monday. In a showdown with rivals and Canadian training partners Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the American pair proved to be a cut above the rest by winning with a record total of 195.52. Davis and White, who also became just the fourth non-Russian couple to scoop ice dance gold, set record scores in each segment of the competition - following up their 78.89 in the short with 116.63 in the long...

Concerns about high debt and an overvalued currency are sucking gold imports into China, according to a new report from Lombard Street Research. It adds that the authorities may possibly be moving in the direction of using gold in a plan to make the yuan an international currency. China's official reserves of gold stand at 1,054 metric tons, that's worth about $45 billion. This figure has not been updated since 2009 and Lombard says the number may not be accurate because since that last update imports of gold and domestic production amount to over 4,500 metric tons.

China is poised to snag the title of the world's biggest gold buyer, a feat that could support prices of the precious metal as well as accelerate the global bullion market's shift eastward. Gold purchases by Chinese consumers jumped 41% last year to a record, according to data released Monday by the China Gold Association. China has long had a cultural affinity for precious metals, and the increasing affluence of consumers there, along with more relaxed investment restrictions, has boosted the country's demand for gold bars and jewelry alike. The increase was enough to overtake India, which for decades, if...

We thought today's newsflow and "market action" ranked pretty high on the absurd surrealism scale. And then we saw this. BLYTHE MASTERS TO JOIN CFTC GLOBAL MARKETS COMMITTEE JPMORGAN’S BLYTHE MASTERS TO JOIN CFTC ADVISORY COMMITTEE CFTC SPOKESMAN COMMENTS ON BLYTHE MASTERS JOINING COMMITTEE That's right - you read it correct: "Blythe Masters, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s commodities division, is joining an advisory committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said Steve Adamske, a spokesman for the regulator. Masters, 44, was invited by acting Chairman Mark Wetjen to sit on a global markets committee at the Washington-based...

Is Anyone Really Surprised That The System Is On The Brink Again? Phoenix Capital ResearchZero Hedge 02/04/2014 15:07 -0500 We find it truly extraordinary that anyone is surprised the financial system is under duress again. After all, what have the Central Banks accomplished in the last five years? 1) Did they clear out the bad debts that caused the 2008 collapse? NOPE 2) Did they implement structural reforms to insure another 2008 didn’t happen? NOPE 3) Did they punish fraud or corruption in any way to insure that the system was clean? NOPE So what did they do? They cut...