This is something out of a dream or a TV show: a married couple takes their dog for a walk and finds buried treasure worth 10 million dollars. But in fact this happened back in 2013.
The treasure is the Saddle Ridge Hoard, the largest cache of gold in history. coins found in the USA. The couple, known in the press as John and Mary, tried to hide their identities and the exact location where they lived in order to prevent potential treasure hunters from entering their territory. What we know was largely told to the press by David McCarthy, the senior numismatist and Cagin researcher who helped the couple evaluate and ultimately sell the treasure.
“One day, as they were walking along this trail, for some reason one of them looked down and saw a can,” McCarthy said in an interview. interview 2014. “They were used to finding tin cans, nails, bullets and other strange things from the 19th century on the property, and they had a habit of digging up things like that because they love history.”
The couple tried to open the can with a stick, but it failed and they tried to take it home. “They went back to the house, tore the top off, and there in the ground was a single gold coin… the edge of a single $20 gold coin sticking out.”
Excited, the couple returned to look for more cans and found one. So they kept looking for more.
“For about two weeks they kept coming back to the site and finding more and more things,” McCarthy said. “They found eight cans after searching the area with a metal detector.”
There were 1,411 coins with a face value of approximately $28,000. Modern values were much higher, partly due to inflation, but also because many of the coins were intact and highly sought after by collectors. The couple, unsure of what to do after finding such a large stash of coins, eventually contacted Kagin's, a company that grades and helps sell rare coins and which is also McCarthy's employer.
Where are the coins from?
There is no exact history of the coins' origins, but there are a few hints, according to McCarthy. Firstly, the banks are in varying states of disrepair, and the coins themselves were minted in different years – from the 1860s to the 1890s. This suggests that someone buried the coins in the same place at different points in time. Another potential hint is the location within 200 miles of the California Gold Rush.
According to McCarthy, gold burial was common in Northern California in the 1800s, mainly because many people lived hundreds of miles from anything resembling a bank. “If you had 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars in gold that you acquired over time, you wouldn't leave it in your house,” he said. “If you don't have a bank to put it in, the only logical choice is to bury it in the ground. That's pretty typical human behavior.”
The idea is that the person who hid the coins died before he could spend them, but also did not tell his immediate family about the cache. However, the features are strange. Many coins were in mint condition, meaning they had never been in circulation. Some were minted thousands of miles away in Georgia, which means their origins have nothing to do with the Gold Rush.
The truth is that there was never a clear explanation. We may never know who buried the coins or why.
Where were the coins?
John and Mary decided to sell most of the coins. Many of them were available on Amazon, and this was the first time a major coin find had been sold through an online store. There was money used to pay off debts and donated to charity. There were two coins donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The couple kept a few coins for themselves – they want them to become family heirlooms.
Has anyone found buried treasure since then?
McCarthy suggested in 2014 that there may be other coin hoards there. “There could be dozens of similar finds,” he said. “Someone may find him at the right time and in the right place. I hope so.”
This is exactly what happened in 2023, when 700 gold coins found in a Kentucky cornfield. The collection was called the Great Kentucky Hoard. The oldest coin in the hoard dates back to 1863, at the height of the American Civil War. This means the collection may have been buried to prevent the coins from being captured by the invading Confederate army. Then again, we may never know the exact reason why the coins were buried.
We see how the coins were found. Eat YouTube video showing the exact momentin case you want to experience the joy of discovering treasures second-hand. Who knows? Perhaps you will discover the next hiding place yourself.
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