It may not
be “finders, keepers” after all for a Northern California couple who discovered a
$10 million gold coin stash on their property last last month
while walking their dog. As it turns out, the mint-condition coins may actually
be the property of the U.S. Mint.
A recently
surfaced news story details a
heist of gold coins from the San Francisco Mint in 1900, and
the stolen coins have many similarities to the ones discovered last month, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The
original face value of the coins was about $27,000 at the turn of the century,
according to experts, which is approximate value of the gold stolen in 1900.
Furthermore, the coins were mostly in chronological order, suggesting they were
unused.
The story
was discovered in the Haithi Trust Digital Library by historian and coin
collector Jack Trout, who also identified another suspicious piece of
evidence linking the newly discovered gold to the 1900 heist: One of the
coins in the stash was an 1866 Liberty $20 gold piece. “I don’t believe
that coin ever left The Mint until the robbery,” he says.
