Posted on 02/26/2014 7:49:29 PM PST by BunnySlippers
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 $27,000, but some of the coins are so rare that experts say they could fetch nearly $1million apiece.
The couple went public with their amazing discovery on Tuesday, and treasure enthusiasts have been quick to suggest that the coins could be the same ones stolen by Walter Dimmick, an employee of the San Francisco Mint in the late 1800′s, reports Altered Dimensions. Dimmick began working at the mint in 1898 and by 1901 was trusted with the keys to the vaults – until an audit revealed a $30,000 shortage in $20 Double Eagle coins, six bags in all.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Read the article. Blue background.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3127146/posts?page=47#47
Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....**I wonder if they were buried in the 1930s when the U.S. government required it citizens to stop hording gold and turn in everything but the family jewels?
The coins may have been minted in the 1800s, but that might have been a nest egg that was hidden to protect it from the gold hungry government. So, if this was illegally held gold, meant to keep it from confiscation when the government called it in during the 30s, then technically it was stolen from the government and must be returned with penalties, fines, fees and possible jail time for the ones who “found” the gold.**
There were a couple Dahlonega, Georgia mint coins in there too.
No way to tell how this will pan out eventually but you can bet the farm that a LOT of people including a bunch of .gov assclowns are looking for ways to
separate this couple from the coins by any means possible.
A bunch of gold coins turned up in a safe deposit box, a while back, and the government claimed them because all coins were ordered turned in by FDR.
We shall see how this plays out.
Back then US gold coins had a face value of $20. So going by today's prices this $27,000 in gold coins is worth about 1.4 million
dollars just goin by weight not rariety
TRUE!!! Instead of telling the world they should have sold it off slowly and quietly. Simple internet research would tell them which ones were easy to sell due to not being rare and which ones they had to be careful with
Like I said here before, the couple shoulda kept their mouths shut and at least gotten them out of California.
The Federal Reserve will now be claiming coins belong to them.
The "couple" had the coins professionally graded and slabbed, and are offering them for sale on Amazon. The whole purpose of "opening their mouths" is to generate buzz for the sale. These coins are also going to be displayed at an upcoming coin collector's convention, generating futher buzz.
The grading and slabbing process takes a lot of time, so clearly the "couple" didn't find these coins yesterday.
The coins are going to be confiscated. The government will assert the circumstantial information about theft, etc. is correct and they will take them.
I wonder how they are going to sell them on Amazon. Will it be by auction or will they just set the price?
-— I would have been tempted to only sell a few coins at a time and keep the rest hidden -—
How do you quietly unload a rare coin valued at $1 million? Besides attracting attention, you could easily wind up dead.
Don't Freepers put keywords under KEYWORDS anymore so threads can be searched before posting???
And as of this post it still has not been done.
Somehow, a small number of them found their way into the hands of collectors - and all that were found and confiscated (they were property of the mint, and counterfeit coins, because no '33 Double Eagles were ever issued) traced were determined to have come through unscrupulous coin deal Israel Switt, through the Head Mint Cashier or Switt's contact in the mint, George McCann. McCann has already been convicted for a similar theft while serving at the mint.
What complicated the theft was that King Farouk of Egypt purchased a '33 Double Eagle om 1944 and applied for an export license. Customs officials had no idea that '33 Double Eagles were considered U.S. property, ineligible for export.
After Farouk's death, the coin appeared an auction catalogue for his massive collections of . . . everything. The U.S. Government sought repossession of the '33 Double Eagle, the item was removed from the auction and disappeared. It appeared again. It turned up again in possesion of an English coin dealer in 1996.
In 2001. the case was settled, transferring title to the U.S., with the U.S. agreeing to make that singular '33 Double Eagle the only one every issued by the U.S. It was sold act auction for over $6 million and the U.S. and the English coin dealer split the profits. In 2005, the ancestors of Israel Skitt anounced they had found ten mint-condition '34 Double Eages in a safe deposit box. The jury in a U.S. District Court tial unanimously found that the coins had never been issued by the mint and were not the property of Switt's heirs. This was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court.
A good book on this subject, although it was written before completion of the ten 'new' Switt safe deposit coins, is Alison Frankel: The Epic Story of the World's Most Valuable Coin.
My story about was a truncated version of a fascinating and detaiied story.
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