I worked for a hoarding remediation company for a few years a while back and we were cleaning out an old home in San Francisco that had been vacant for years (the family had just held onto it since their aunt died in the eighties) - long story short we were clearing the place out for them, I found a false bottom cupboard in the basement and discovered a cast iron pan encased in cement - inside the pan was two jars full of gold coins - all dated in the 1840's - all un-circulated as well.
We documented everything and of course had the family there right away. The family had been immigrants from Poland, and they said it was always a family legend that their great uncle had hidden away a hoard of valuable coins. The kicker is they never said thank's for finding them; in fact one of the relatives had the guts to ask me if I had taken any which was a serious burn to my integrity . Never saw any of them go to auction - never hit the papers but having done research with pictures I had at the time, one of the smallest coins, a similar one had sold at auction for over 700k years before.
It was a glorious moment - just wish they would have given me a share or at least a thank you. The amount of history and antiques they simply had thrown out of that home disgusted me as well.
A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their Gold Country property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.
Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them.
Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece.
Well they do live in gold country; a lot of lost treasures out there - maybe they found it on federal lands and decided to say they found it on their own? Who knows. I think it is great though - love it when big finds like this are made it keeps the treasure hunting fever in me alive.
GREAT FIND!!......here is a link that has a few pictures of the find, that is now called the "SADDLE RIDGE HOARD" cache.....NICE!!
Just one of the coins a "Saddle Ridge Hoard" PCGS slabbed 1866-S $20 No Motto has an original mintage of only 12,000 and is very rare. PCGS values an MS60 one at $275,000. That one coin would make my DAY!!....No,no...make that a LIFETIME....lol.