Northern California couple strikes $11 million in gold

A northern Californian couple struck gold last year, finding a treasure trove of antique Gold Rush era coins estimated to be worth $11 million dollars.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - One of the coins, an 1874 $20 double eagle, sold for $15,000 at auction at the Old San Francisco Mint, nearly three times its worth.

Give a little luck to somebody with a St. Christopher pendant.

The coins date from 1847 to 1894.

Don Kagin, a numismatist who is handling the sale, says that most of the remaining 1,400 coins had gone on sale on Amazon.com and Kagins.com after the auction. The couple, who wish to remain anonymous to avoid a modern day gold rush to their property, discovered the coins last year, buried on their property, under a tree in eight cans.

Part of the reason these coins are so valuable is due to the rarity. Paper money was illegal in California until the 1870s, so it is hard to find any coins from before then. In addition, the coins are in mint condition; to all appearances as if they were stashed immediately after being minted.

Amongst the treasure trove is a 1866-S No Motto $20 gold piece with a value of more than $1 million. Theories abound as to why and by whom the gold was stashed, including Black Bart and Jesse James, though thus far neither have panned out.

This is the largest such discovery in U. S history, though there have been a few other large coin finds. In 1985, construction workers in Jackson Mississippi found over a million dollars in gold coins; 400,000 silver dollars were found in the home of a Reno, Nevada, man, which were sold for $7.3 million.

The couple plans to keep a few of the coins for themselves and will use the money from the rest to pay off bills and donate to local charities. Money from the May 27 auction will be used to turn the Old Mint into a museum.

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