Posted on 07/10/2023 4:55:33 PM PDT by Enterprise
A Kentucky man got the surprise of his life while digging in his field earlier this year: a cache of over 700 coins from the American Civil War era.
The "Great Kentucky Hoard" includes hundreds of U.S. gold pieces dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins. In a short video, the man who discovered the hoard — whose identity and specific location have not been revealed to the public — says, "This is the most insane thing ever: Those are all $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins," as he aims his camera at the artifacts tumbling out of the dirt.
According to the Numismatic Guaranty Co. (NGC), which certified the coins' authenticity, and GovMint, where the coins were sold, 95% of the hoard is composed of gold dollars, along with 20 $10 Liberty coins and eight $20 Liberty coins. The rarest is the 1863-P $20 1-ounce gold Liberty coin. Just one of these coins can go for six figures at auction, and the Great Kentucky Hoard boasts 18 of them. NGC's website notes that the $20 Liberty coin, which circulated from 1850 to 1907, was minted by the Treasury Department after gold was discovered in California. The $20 Liberty coins in the hoard are even rarer because they do not include "In God We Trust," which was added in 1866 after the end of the Civil War.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I’m guessing he’s coming to the Gold Coast to buy a mansion.
Has Rush’s place sold yet?
5.56mm
“HIS cornfield”
Not “fedgov’s cornfield”
This isn’t the UK where their antiquities laws severely gut someones finds.
Good for him. I have had many dreams where I find a coin hoard. :)
What an amazing find!
Probably some druggie stole Grandpa's coin collection to buy cigarettes.
The rare wheat penny, but no silver, for quite a while.
My dream is to find an MS roll of 1916 or 1917 SLQs, Type 1, but this will, most definitely, do!
Find of a lifetime!
I think pretty much all the silver coins I’ve received in change for many years now have been because kids (or druggies) stole coin collections and spent the coins on candy or whatever.
I did one year, but the squirrels took most of it.
The 1891 seated liberty silver dime I found was actually found in the gutter in my hometown on New Year’s day of this year.
That’s pretty cool. Wonder how it got there.
I have only found a Colorado sales tax token, aluminum, and 2 mills. They stopped using them in 1945, so pretty cool anyway.
I think for some of the rarer coins it's to establish their provenance. If a bunch of those really rare coins were to suddenly show up, there would be questions from the potential purchasers as to the authenticity.
The joke about the farmer winning the lottery:
“So what are you going to do with the $2 million dollars?”
“Well, I reckon now I can keep farming for a few more years.”
I wouldn’t mind finding something like this. It would suck to have to pay the feds their cut right off the top, but I’d do it so I wouldn’t have to be looking over my shoulder after I sold the first coin.
It always amazes me how shiny gold stays. That cache is worth a LOT of money. Crazy. Heck - even at the time it was buried it was quite a bit at face value.
Guessing about $1,500 face value. Looked up wages for 1860, a mason made 22.5 cents an hour, 60 hour weeks - $700 a year. Today, masons make about $60k in New York and California.
It’s easy to authenticate. NGC as told here, or PCGS.
“I did one year, but the squirrels took most of it”.
Along with the gold
I worked 30 years ago in car parts.
The shade tree mechanics and car nuts and Rodders all were mostly white trash of course. I got plenty of interesting older coins, and foreign. I figure the families just collected change over decades in jars and the hicks and rednecks scraped up whatever money they could find.
Cars and coins were my hobbies so it was a great way to find some free stuff. Even an occasional old bill that was truly green, and a silver certificate.
I was wondering when someone would get around to that.
Whoever buried that, it represented maybe a lifetime of savings, or sale of a business property, or something significant. Gold money was called “specie”. Real money, as compared with various state bank notes, which fluctuated in value relative to their perceived soundness.
A $1 was a lot of money in those days. I’m not sure how the Civil War affected monetary inflation but it was likely bad. The Union issued “Greenbacks” to try and pay for everything.
Does the IRS tax a windfall like that? Somebody alluded to that earlier in this thread. The first thing I would do, is count it at FACE VALUE, as it US legal tender. That should help a lot, for now.
Once he sells them, even one of the rare ones, well he’s in a new world.
Nice problem to have.
Nobody would question their authenticity, but they might start axin’ questions. He could have sold one or two a year and got away with it. Maybe. Then the bank starts asking questions. Can’t take it with you, I’m always intrigued by these hoards.
For some reason, some poor feller never retrieved his stash. And it was a nice stash.
I agree.
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