Gold Coin Hoard
ricko
Posts: 98,724 ✭✭✭✭✭
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ricko
Posts: 98,724 ✭✭✭✭✭
ricko
Posts: 98,724 ✭✭✭✭✭
Comments
"They plan to put most of the coins up for sale through Amazon while holding onto a few keepsakes."
Not a smart move...
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
I knew it would happen.
Neat story…great eyeball find!
<< <i>That's pretty darned fantastic! I guess whoever buried those cans didn't trust the banking system much.
Or else, they were interested in tax evasion, money laundering, or hiding ill-gotten gains. One thing is certain, once buried, those particular coins did no material good for that particular gold-hoarder, or anyone else, for over 100 years.
Dream find for the landowners!
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
Wonder if there are records of robberies in that area back then?
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I knew it would happen.
A metal detectors dream.
Now if the 3 feet of snow staring at me through the window would go away
I can dust off the DFX.
<< <i>1427 gold coins in late 1800s? Sounds like a stage coach or bank robbery to me! Buried the loot and didn't live long enough to spend it.
Wonder if there are records of robberies in that area back then? >>
I read a story a few years back about a stagecoach robbery The guy was caught and sent to prison.
Story/Article said the guy could see the spot where he buried it from his cell window but never gave up the location
and died before his sentence was up.
32d,32s,34d,35d,36d,37,37d,37s,38,38s,39s.
<< <i>The coins were stashed in chronological order, more or less. Sounds like a self-directed regular savings plan. >>
So how did that work out for him?
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
<< <i>The coins were stashed in chronological order, more or less. Sounds like a self-directed regular savings plan. >>
Sounds completely natural and logical. It also sounds like the only way to have done it before 1870, at least, when only gold was legal tender (from what I've read). How else was a prospector (or other person) supposed to transfer his nuggets and dust into gold coin? Go to the San Francisco assay office, have his gold assayed and get freshly-minted gold coin in return. Sorry for all you conspiracy theorists, but the evidence in this case points to none other than an honest working man's wages: the fruits of his labor, on a regular basis over decades of prospecting or working in a service or industry where he took in gold in other than coin form, and had it "legally" and lawfully transferred into constitutional money. 30 years ago not one person in a million would have suggested that the finder of this treasure wouldn't be allowed to keep it. WTF has become of this country? I'm almost ashamed to call myself an American if this is all I see today.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -Luke 11:9
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." -Deut. 6:4-5
"For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us." -Isaiah 33:22
<< <i>They should never have gone public.....no good cache hunter would ever make this mistake. Cheers, RickO >>
Of course I agree with you, Rick. They had them attributed, so they're looking at making a name for themselves. Not good to stick your head up in a turkey shoot. Why make yourself an obvious target?
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -Luke 11:9
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." -Deut. 6:4-5
"For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us." -Isaiah 33:22
<< <i>They should never have gone public.....no good cache hunter would ever make this mistake. Cheers, RickO >>
Now they gonna give 1/2 to Uncle Sam. Again, the curse of arrogance and greed has bested man.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
<< <i> Not good to stick your head up in a turkey shoot. >>
Good one 1Jester..... and very true. It is the first rule of cache hunting - "Never talk about your finds." Cheers, RickO
sayonara
<< <i>The money could have come from a lot of different places. Consider this:
In 1894, $50,000 was stolen in a robbery of a Southern Pacific Overland Express robbery out of Sacramento. One half of this hoard was buried near Sheep Camp, a hobo jungle that was close to the city at the time of the robbery. It was yet to be recovered.
A miner named Mayberry took over $40,000 in gold from his claim at Bloody Run and buried it near his cabin. Robbers attempted to learn where his gold was buried and, when Mayberry refused to tell them where it was, they killed him. His gold has never been found.
In 1895, two outlaws stole $50,000 in gold coins from a Wells Fargo shipment in a Union Pacific RR train robbery and buried the cache in the area of a hobo jungle just outside Washington. A hobo named John Harmons witnessed the burial, dug it up and took $5,000 from the sacks, reburying the rest a short distance away. Harmons went on a long drinking spree and when he returned for more money, he was unable to relocate the burial site and the $45,000 was never recovered.
A man by the name of Hines lived in the area of Strawberry Valley area in the late 1800's. He is known to have accumulated about 30 pounds of gold from his prospecting trips which he buried somewhere in or near his house. Hines died in 1897 and his cache of gold was never found.
Between $18,000 and $22,000 in gold coins was buried by a Basque sheepherder about 7 miles from Loyalton, a short ways up Six Mile Canyon near a large, tall pine tree. The cache has never been found.
Buried in it, or nearby, is the life savings of an old man who died suddenly from food poisoning. The miner was known to have had several thousand dollars in coins and bills which was never found after his death.
"Big Jim" Fisher built a cabin in the late 1890's at the big bend of Canyon Creek, about 200 yards up the hillside. Fisher took on a mining partner, Frank Keenan, who built a cabin on the lower end of Keenan Ditch, and a third partner named Frank Howell who moved into a cabin at the mouth of Fisher Gulch.
The men worked the rich placer area and acquired many lard and tobacco cans full of gold nuggets which they hid at various spots around their respective cabins. They enlisted a blacksmith to construct 3 copper boxes, each 10 x 12 x 12 inches, and each man had his own chest.
Fisher buried his gold-filled chest in the blue slide below the ditch near his cabin. Keenan buried his box near his cabin in Butcher Gulch, near the end of the ditch. Howell's chest was buried in the rocks behind his cabin. Howell died of a rattlesnake bite a short time later and his chest of nuggets was never found.
Fisher and Keenan continued to work the rich creek for years afterwards and there is no record of these frugal partners ever having spent, or removing, their chests of gold.
The two died of natural causes and their chest of gold were never recovered.
It's also believed that many smaller caches of gold remain hidden in the same area, about 20 miles northwest of Weaverville and just north of the Canyon Creek Bridge.
Saddle Ridge Gold not connected to 1901 SF Mint Heist
These are just stories people know about... there are undoubtedly others no one knows about. >>
"Despite the surge of speculation about the Saddle Ridge Hoard coming from the 1901 theft of $30,000 in gold coins from the old U.S. Mint in San Francisco, leading historians and Mint officials say that explanation doesn’t cut it.
“There is nothing connecting these coins to any theft from the Mint,” said U.S. Mint spokesman Adam Stump. “We’ve done quite a bit of research, and we’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.”
SF Gate article >>
<< <i>
<< <i>The coins were stashed in chronological order, more or less. Sounds like a self-directed regular savings plan. >>
So how did that work out for him? >>
No one knows. It could have worked out just fine for them if they were slowly selling off coins to support their lifestyle. Their final years may have been just fine. The fact that the heirs (if any existed) didn't get anything
passed down is a shame though. With all the bank panics of that panic (1893 for one) and the depression of 1893-1896 having your gold stashed at home was probably the wisest thing. Banks would have been the last
place to be trusted during that era...at least with the people's gold. There's no crime in ending up with excess assets and money when you pass. It's a problem when you run out of assets while you're still alive. The person
is question could have met an untimely death. We'll never know. We don't know how it worked out for the orig owner of that gold cache.
Makes me wonder if there could be another stash in that area.