$10M Gold Coin Hoard Found in Yard May Have Been Stolen From Mint

[The Straight Story]

A California couple who found a stash of buried gold coins valued at $10 million may not be so lucky after all. The coins may have been stolen from the US Mint in 1900 and thus be the property of the government, according to a published report.

The San Francisco Chronicle's website reported that a search of the Haithi Trust Digital Library provided by Northern California fishing guide Jack Trout, who is also a historian and collector of rare coins, turned up the news of the theft.

The California couple, who have not been identified, spotted the edge of an old can on a path they had hiked many times before several months ago. 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 Don Kagin 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.

The coins are mostly uncirculated and in mint condition, and they add up in face value to $27,000. "Those two facts are a match of the gold heist in 1900 from the San Francisco Mint," the newspaper reported.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/10m-calif-gold-coin-hoard-found-yard-stolen/story?id=22764360

[Nye Bevan]

1. Bummer (nt)

[1000words]

2. Should have never gone public

[haele]

5. No way for it not to go public, eventually it would come out.

Especially if the coins had been part of a mint robbery, and a bunch of them started coming on the market.
Provenance is always checked with items that valuable, and ownership can be traced. If you attempt to sell them on ebay or privately piecemeal, it might take longer, but it's difficult not to fall into a selling pattern that will raise red flags to the government people who watch over these sorts of things.

Ultimately, they'd be in legal trouble if they had sold any of the coins.

Haele

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. They could have tested the market with, say, five or ten coins saying....

.... great great grandpa Fred passed these to great grandpa Fred who passed them to Grandpa Fred who passed them to dad. Stuff like that goes on in auction houses around the world every day without much fanfare.

Instead of splashing international headlines about everyone's fantasy of finding a pot of gold in their back yard.

Who DIDN'T think "rightful owners" would come crawling out of the woodwork? (legitimate or not)

[B Calm]

17. I really think they can't prove these are the coins that were stolen.

[tridim]

3. Finders vs. Keepers. nt

[Politicalboi]

4. They should get to keep them

They're going to get a finders fee. Big fucking whoop. They should charge the mint for storage all these years. I hope they at least get half of it's worth after everything is said and done.

[postulater]

6. So the government mint gets back $27,000 and they get the rest?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

7. This why you keep your trap shut.

Chicago outfit boss Tony Accardo used to take underlings in to his den in is River Forest home and show them the large marlin mounted on the wall above his fireplace telling his subordinates "If that fish had kept his big mouth shut, he wouldn't be on that wall" (or so the story goes)

[snooper2]

8. prove it

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. There's a lesson there.

I have a feeling the "shouldn't have talked about it" crowd is bigger than the "blabbermouth" crowd.

[mulsh]

11. Here's what a US Treasury employee has to say about this issue:

Mint spokesman Adam Stump issued this statement when contacted today by ABC News: "We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA’s jurisdiction: http://www.archives.gov/."

Mr. Trout may be a great guide and know a lot about old coins but he's hardly the last word on this issue. The contemorary article is not from a local SF paper it's not even from a paper like the NY Times or Herald Tribune, it's from Haiti, not exactly a "paper of record" even back then.

You can bet there's an expedited records request filtering through the NARA's systems and if records do exist tying these coins to the theft the treasury dept will act as quickly as they can.

[yuiyoshida]

12. Oh, wow.

/

[B Calm]

13. I would think they would have to have verifiable, undeniable proof that

those coins were the ones stolen!

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. I found a coin. "It's stolen", you say?

I also found this five pound featureless lump of melted gold.

[seveneyes]

15. So the feds take face value minus reward and the finders keep the rest

Uncle sugar gets their pound of flesh and the little guy gets their just reward. Make one wonder how many billions the feds have confiscated from weed growers and users.

[rurallib]

16. I suppose they already said how many they found

you know turn in @ 3/4ths of them and say that's all there were.