Posted on 02/26/2014 6:17:45 AM PST by Red Badger
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 of numismatic firm Kagin’s Inc. of Tiburon, says the couple want to remain anonymous and plan to sell most of the coins.
Kagin said the gold pieces were struck between 1847 and 1894, many of which are in pristine condition. “This family literally found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” said Kagin said.
The find is now being called The Saddle Ridge Treasure, named after a feature of the family’s property.
After finding the treasure, Kagin Inc. senior numismatist David McCarthy was dispatched to evaluate the coins, according to the press release.
Latest News NorCal Couple Finds $10M In Gold Coins; May Be Greatest Buried Treasure Ever Found In U.S. February 25, 2014 11:40 PM Share on email 417 View Comments Related Tags: Auction, Bonanza, California, Coins, Country, Couple, Don Kagin, Found, Gold, Gold Coins, Kagin's Inc., Tiburon, Unearthed
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 of numismatic firm Kagin’s Inc. of Tiburon, says the couple want to remain anonymous and plan to sell most of the coins.
Kagin said the gold pieces were struck between 1847 and 1894, many of which are in pristine condition. “This family literally found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” said Kagin said.
The find is now being called The Saddle Ridge Treasure, named after a feature of the family’s property.
After finding the treasure, Kagin Inc. senior numismatist David McCarthy was dispatched to evaluate the coins, according to the press release.
“We all dream about discovering buried treasure; seeing the real thing in person – piles of gold coins encrusted in dirt and rust – the experience was just indescribable,” said McCarthy. “Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine coins coming out of the ground in the kind of condition that I saw in front of me. Many pieces were finer than anything known in major collections or museums.”
Kagin said the previous largest gold coin find in the United States was found in Tennessee in 1985 with coins having a face value of $4,500, eventually selling for around $1 million. The face value of the Saddle Ridge treasure is over $28,000.
About 90 percent of the gold pieces will be available for purchase through Amazon.com, according to Kagin.
Today at this moment, platoons of lawyers are combing the land records. Next, they will find a great-nephew of the original hoarder to claim the coins as his property. California will agree, and the coins will be in probate for another century. Or until they are “lost” and wind up in some Cali politico’s floor safe.
The Feds or the State might claim it was ‘stolen’ in some long forgotten robbery back in 1862 or some such...............
Exactly. You can bet plenty of state and private lawyers are working it hard, looking for an angle to grab the coins.
Agreed.
Everyone has to desperately strive to be, “SOMEONE,” and get their 15 minutes of fame these days.
All the while good, smart and seasoned concealed carrying Americans halt crime and save lives 2 million times a year.
Yet nary a peep about that because they fear retaliation, and thus refuse to tell the press.
Quite sad.
(My apologies as I’m still pi$$ed off about O’Bummer’s pet Holder’s saying that state’s AGs can ignore laws that they don’t like)
“In Britain, they would have had to turn the treasure over to the government..................”
That does not preclude the current dictator from ‘confiscating’ the loot as ‘government property’.....which would not surprise me.
I agree with the original statement. The years 1877 and 1894 are particularly pristine.
I agree with the original statement. The years 1877 and 1894 are particularly pristine.
That’s what I was thinking. Find a state with the most tax friendly response to the find, buy a place there and make it your primary residence. THEN make the claim....
They have got to be among the most stupid people to ever walk the face of the Earth for telling anyone about this, especially being so ‘public’ about it. I most likely would have quietly put it in a safe deposit box at a solid bank and contact a trusted(HA!) attorney to explore options. I know one thing for sure, at around the top of my ‘to-do’ list for that type of situation would be getting the hell out of California.
Their stupidity alone makes them undeserving of such a find, because it will cause them to inevitably lose it in one way or another. Either by government/bureaucrats wanting their piece of the action, or by outright theft from others. I have a bridge to sell them, and I think they’ll actually buy it!
I've heard that the British government is pretty good at paying an honest value for the found items. They are interested in retaining the historical value of the items, not ripping off the finder.
Good thing they found those coins on their own property. I wonder how long they’ve owned that property?
.......one particular comment of the article..."if you like your gold coins, you can keep your gold coins"..
My Mother is 88 years old, and she said that back in the old days that people usually buried there money by very large old trees. They needed a solid marker so they could come back and find it. In fact about 20 years ago, my parents bought a place and found an old coffee can buried close to a tree, and it had about 10 old silver dollars in it.
Their first mistake was telling ANYONE about the find.
The second is being a resident of California - or maybe that’s ‘first’....hard to find a difference, really.
While I enjoy watching that show, and admire their passion/efforts, those Hoffman people are so foolish at times. Of course, they aren’t nearly as bad as the show that had the two guys that went to Africa(or wherever it was) and nearly got themselves killed by the locals. The show never did come back on air after that season. I wonder what ever happened with those guys. On the Gold Rush show, I like the “Dakota Boys”. They seem to be the ones that have their heads on straight, most of the time anyway.
That “Bearing Sea Gold” show is just painful to watch most of the time. Not much smarts on that show either, except for maybe two or three people. Nome Alaska looks like a pretty hard-core place. From the air, it looks like a huge junkyard.
The county will probably seize their property using eminent domain in the name of making it a worm sanctuary. They'll make the seizure retroactive to before the find.
- - CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING :
- oh yeah - contact a “trusted attorney” and……..
- tell you “current wife” (in California!)
- tell your idiot cokehead nephew
- open a law book yourself and ignore anything negative to your own interests or be dismembered, dissolved in acids and and tossed in old rusty cans in the Pacific Ocean above the Arctic Circle -
I guess they never heard of “shovel and shut up”. Now Uncle and every scammer will bee looking for a slice.
By the terms of that law, these people will probably have to surrender the entire fortune to the federal government and then the $35 per ounce will be deposited in some fund for distribution to the family of the person who buried it there. The theory would be that as of 1933 all those gold dollars became the property of the Federal Government.
As others have said, they should have just buried it in their own backyard and sold it piecemeal. Finders keepers only applies in elementary school playground situations.
That’s what I was thinking. I would not have come out with this story, at least until after attorneys had properly researched as to my chances of keeping the gold or profits from it.
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