oops.....sorry didn't know it was already posted....
millennium
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Date: Wednesday, 3 March 2004, at 12:24 p.m.
By Associated Press
March 3, 2004, 9:46 AM EST
PORTLAND, Maine -- America's rarest silver dollar -- and possibly its most famous stolen coin -- was discovered in a box filled with miscellaneous coins by a Maine librarian who wasn't even a collector.
The coin, thought to be one of only two 1866 silver dollars minted without the inscription "In God We Trust," is estimated to be worth at least $1 million.
The "No Motto Dollar" was among thousands of coins taken during an armed robbery at a home in Coconut Grove, Fla., in 1967. Most of the best-known coins taken in the unsolved heist have been recovered.
The coin surfaced after American Numismatic Rarities, a coin auction company, received a call from a Maine man who said he thought he had it.
John Kraljevich, the company's director of numismatic research who took the call, would identify the man only as a librarian who had moved to Maine from California.
Kraljevich said the man told him an eccentric friend in California gave him the box of coins -- the others having no exceptional value -- as collateral for a loan. The man couldn't keep the coin because it was stolen property, Kraljevich said.
The coin will go to the American Numismatic Association museum in Colorado Springs, Colo., after it is authenticated, said Harold Gray, an attorney for Willis du Pont, the coin's original owner.
There, it will join the 1866 "No Motto" quarter and 50-cent piece -- only one of each was minted -- that were also stolen in the 1967 robbery and later recovered.
Gray said du Pont follows up every lead for the stolen coins, which have surfaced the world over. "He was elated," Gray said. "Hope springs eternal, does it not?"
Is this true?
Link to example of coin
By Associated Press
March 3, 2004, 9:46 AM EST
PORTLAND, Maine -- America's rarest silver dollar -- and possibly its most famous stolen coin -- was discovered in a box filled with miscellaneous coins by a Maine librarian who wasn't even a collector.
The coin, thought to be one of only two 1866 silver dollars minted without the inscription "In God We Trust," is estimated to be worth at least $1 million.
The "No Motto Dollar" was among thousands of coins taken during an armed robbery at a home in Coconut Grove, Fla., in 1967. Most of the best-known coins taken in the unsolved heist have been recovered.
The coin surfaced after American Numismatic Rarities, a coin auction company, received a call from a Maine man who said he thought he had it.
John Kraljevich, the company's director of numismatic research who took the call, would identify the man only as a librarian who had moved to Maine from California.
Kraljevich said the man told him an eccentric friend in California gave him the box of coins -- the others having no exceptional value -- as collateral for a loan. The man couldn't keep the coin because it was stolen property, Kraljevich said.
The coin will go to the American Numismatic Association museum in Colorado Springs, Colo., after it is authenticated, said Harold Gray, an attorney for Willis du Pont, the coin's original owner.
There, it will join the 1866 "No Motto" quarter and 50-cent piece -- only one of each was minted -- that were also stolen in the 1967 robbery and later recovered.
Gray said du Pont follows up every lead for the stolen coins, which have surfaced the world over. "He was elated," Gray said. "Hope springs eternal, does it not?"
Is this true?
Link to example of coin
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