What about the numismatic value?
One twenty gold piece found at the Saddleback hoard in the California Gold Country....an 1866 coin without the motto “In God We Trust”.....is worth one million dollars to a serious coin collector.
It’s melt down value would be what...a couple of thousand dollars?
These 1,000 year old coins found in the waters off Israel are said to be priceless.
About the Saddle Ridge find, from Wikipedia:
“Following the initial discovery of the coins, there was widespread speculation that the hoard represented the discovery of the 1901 theft of $30,000 from the San Francisco Mint by employee Walter Dimmick. Kagin’s and the U.S. Mint ruled out this theory, stating that the Saddle Ridge Hoard is unlikely to be part of the mint heist, due to the diversity in the face value and condition of the coins. On March 4, 2014, The U.S. Mint stated that “[they] do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility”, and “[they’ve] done quite a bit of research, and we’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.”