Some people only dream about finding buried treasure in their backyard, but this is what really happened to a Kentucky farmer who was digging in his cornfield; he found a cache of more than 800 Civil War-era gold coins — a treasure worth millions that experts are calling one of the greatest finds of the 21st century.
“It’s hard to put this in context because there are so few instances of coins of this nature with this level of rarity being found in the ground in the United States,” Andrew Salzberg, executive vice president of the Numismatic Guaranty Company’s (NGC) Certified Collectibles Group, told Fox News Digital.
NGC, a third-party grading service for coins, tokens and medals based in Sarasota, Florida, certified the coins — dubbed the “Great Kentucky Hoard” — and valued them at more than $2 million.
“Most of them are gold dollars, which in and of themselves are really interesting pieces of numismatic history,” Salzberg said.
In addition, he added, there were some $20 gold pieces — “a couple of which were dated 1863 and graded MS 64, which is the highest grade that has ever been graded,” he said.
Who was that lucky person who struck gold? For now, no one is talking. Nor do we know the exact location of the cornfield where they were found. The find is being compared to winning the lottery.
“This is the most insane thing ever,” the man said in the video, in part.
“Those are $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins. And look, I’m still digging them out.”
After the coins were certified by the NGC, they were professionally cleaned in a way that would not compromise their integrity.
Jeff Garrett, a numismatist from Lexington, working with the NGC, named the coins the “Great Kentucky Hoard” and created a special label for them. They were then listed for sale on govmint.com and were snapped up in a matter of days, Garrett said.
“It’s not uncommon to find coins, particularly ancient coins, buried in the ground. But to find U.S. rarities buried in the ground is extremely rare,” he added.
That’s because the United States is a much younger country, according to Salzburg.
“Going back 2,000-plus years, there was a lot of commerce and trade going on in other parts of the world, but not so much in the United States that we know today,” he said, adding that the coins’ burial in the ground actually helped preserve them.
“Over the course of 150 years, it really did a great job preserving the coins’ condition. Those 1863 20s were unbelievable to see,” Salzberg said.
How the coins came to be buried in the first place may be interesting. According to Salzberg, “Back in those days, you couldn’t always go to a bank or put them in a safe or store them in a vault.”
“Nothing was really available to somebody looking to hide their wealth, so the best way to do it was to bury it in the ground.”
“It’s difficult to say exactly what war-related activity caused it, but it does seem that probably the motive behind hiding this money is civil unrest, conflict, raids coming through,” he said. And that may also explain why the owner never came back to reclaim the hoard.
“Maybe [the person] died, maybe they were forced off their land,” he said.
“The chances of finding something like this, I would say, are in line with winning the lottery,” Salzberg said.
“It’s a truly historic and rare find. I can’t disagree that, as far as coins being found in the ground, this is one of the most significant finds of the 21st century,” he added.
