Canada Journal – News of the World Articles and videos to bring you the biggest Canadian news stories from across the country every day
A California couple who found $10 million worth of buried gold coins may not be so lucky after all.
The couple found the mint condition coins on their property while hiking a few months ago.
Turns out, the coins may have been stolen from the U.S. Mint in 1900, according the San Francisco Chronicle. That would make the coins property of the U.S. government.
“We do not have any information linking the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility,” Mint rep Adam Stump tells CNN, and that determination follows a good deal of research, he adds to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“We’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.” Richard Kelly, who wrote a book on the San Francisco Mint, sees a further issue with the dates of the uncovered coins—they’re stamped 1847 to 1894, and he thinks ones taken from the mint would be dated nearer to 1901.
“We assume from the times and all the records that they were new coins [taken]. Back then, once coins were printed they flew out of the mint.”
And a coin dealer tells the Los Angeles Times that each of the six bags of Double Eagles (that’s a $20 coin) stolen would have held coins bearing the same date and mint mark. The buried coins feature “12 times as many permutations as we should have,” he says.
The Chronicle also takes a look at what one coin collector considers to be the smoking gun: an 1866 Double Eagle that had no “In God We Trust” motto on it; 1866 was the year that motto began gracing the coins, and Jack Trout told the paper that he believed the presence of the rare and valuable coin amid the buried haul signaled that it had to have come directly from the San Francisco Mint. But the Chronicle turns to the Encyclopedia of U.S. Gold Coins, which presents the coin as anything but one-of-a-kind: Per the encyclopedia, 120,000 “No Motto” Double Eagles were produced in San Francisco in 1866 before the changeover occurred.
Agencies/Canadajournal
I hope that the couple in California get to keep the coins; just think about it at the time the they were buried the banks were not protected as today so the best thing for most families was to get together and have the elder or head of the family and bury it in a spot that only certian members would know of to care and it the family together;especially if there was something big as taxes on a family ranch or spreads or a bank note that would come due whichin a couple of years (10 years+) for a start up on equipment and seeds,etc. . I am glad that they were blessed.