Phone Call
He felt his stomach tie itself into a knot. He bent down and put his hand in the hole his dogs had dug. He felt a pile of items. He pulled them out one by one. Surely it wasn’t what he thought it was. He had no idea what was coming.
His hand shook as he looked down at his dogs. He needed to make some phone calls if he wanted to get to the bottom of things. He just had no idea how it would change his life forever.
Liam Smith
Liam Smith prided himself on what he had built from himself. He had always dreamed of finding the right girl and settling down. Well, at the age of 20, he managed to find a woman that he thought was perfect.
He spent the next few months courting her. He knew that if he set his mind to something, nothing was impossible. Then one day, she finally told him to stop.
Mary
Mary had had enough of being chased and confronted Liam. She told him that she was tired of it and was finally ready to be with him. Things couldn’t have gone better from there. Mary owned her own bakery by 23, and Liam was a fitness trainer.
After dating for three years, the two decided to take the next step in their relationship. Liam got down on one knee and proposed to Mary, who cried tears of joy. They would be together forever. Just one thing was missing.
More Family Members
They felt like something was missing, so they decided to adopt three beautiful dogs from rescue shelters. They knew that three would be a handful, but they couldn’t leave the shelter knowing two other dogs would be put down.
So that’s how they came to have Rex, Joey, and Bella. Three very different dogs that loved being a part of the family. But they had no idea what it would cause.
Walks
Because three dogs can be quite a hassle, Liam and Mary would have to take turns walking them every day. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it at the end of the day. They would walk around their property for an hour every day.
But they were unaware that their walks would stick in the minds of their dogs and even lead them to a discovery that would change their lives forever.
A Place Of Interest
Liam noticed that when he walked his dogs on his property, they would go crazy at a specific place in the garden. They sniffed and scratched at the same spot in the ground. Liam called them away. It was probably a rat or some kind of animal hiding away.
But after Liam had forgotten about the spot, it lingered in his dogs’ minds. And he would be so mistaken about what they were interested in.
A Present
During the night, Liam left his dogs outside to roam the property. They had kennels padded with warm blankets, so he never worried about them. But they would be digging while he slept.
In the morning, when Liam woke up, he got the kettle on for his coffee and went to feed the dogs. But when he got to the back glass sliding door, he was met with a surprising sight. They were covered in mud, and Rex dropped something at his feet. He couldn’t believe what it was.
Gold Coin
Liam bent down and picked up the present that his dogs had left him. He picked it up and examined it. It was round and flat but had a lot of mud on it. He decided to go and wash it off.
He spent a good 10 minutes rinsing the object in the sink; he was careful not to use any products in case he damaged whatever it was. But once most of the dirt was gone, he started to see the gold shininess underneath. Where had they found this?
Forgetting About It
Liam put the coin in one of his drawers and made a mental note to check out what it was on the weekend when he had time. He soon forgot about it and went on his day as normal. After he finished work in the evening, he went to bed.
But if he had known what he would find the next morning, he would have taken the coin he had found more seriously. It was the discovery of a lifetime.
A Different Walk
The next day when Liam woke up, he discovered another muddy coin by the door. He now knew this was no coincidence. He decided to take his dogs on a walk. Maybe he could figure out where they had found it?
He was waiting to find a neighbor reporting their money stolen. But when he ended up finding the origins of the coins, it was something he could never have expected.
A Discovery
He felt his stomach tie itself into a knot. He bent down and put his hand in the hole his dogs had dug. He felt something. Surely it wasn’t what he thought it was. He had no idea what was coming.
His hand shook as he looked down at his dogs. He needed to make some phone calls if he wanted to get to the bottom of things. He just had no idea how it would change his life forever.
Emerging From The Dirt
An old and rusted paint can started to emerge from the soil. Liam started to dig around it with a stick until he could lift it from its hiding place.
It was heavy and sealed shut with an old, rusted lid. Someone had taken great care to conceal whatever was inside, but why?
What Was Inside?
Liam tried to muscle open the container, but it was rusted firmly shut. He held it up to his ear and shook it carefully from side to side, and the contents moved with a weighty “clack, clack.”
What could possibly be inside? Liam would have to wait a little longer to find out.
The Rusty Can
Liam rushed to fetch a pair of pliers and a hacksaw. Finally, he emerged with a wide grin and began the task of opening the rusted old can.
He squeezed the top firmly with the pliers and twisted, and the lid came loose, spraying dried clods of dirt and dust as it fell. Barely containing himself, he peered inside.
Peering Inside
His first glimpse into the darkness inside the can didn’t reveal much about its contents, there was what looked like dirt and gravel.
The soil inside was damp and packed, but then something shiny caught his eye as it caught the light and he knew that they would have to dig deeper to reveal the contents inside.
Poking Around
Liam gingerly poked around inside the can with his finger, getting damp soil under his nails. Then, his fingertips felt something different, sticking out from beneath the sand and gravel that had been packed into the rusty old paint can. Something cool and smooth, with ribbed edges.
Something that felt like metal. “I’ve found something,” he whispered.
Buried Treasure
As coin after coin emerged, Liam couple gasped in amazement. After gently wiping the mud away from them with his sleeve, he held them in the light to get a better look. The first one was dated 1886, it was unbelievable!
He grabbed the remaining coins on the table to inspect, and the other coins in the mysterious stash didn’t disappoint.
The Mystery Deepens
All in all, there were over 100 of the old coins in the rusty can. Liam couldn’t believe his luck! And the more he pulled out, the more his astonishment grew.
Little did he know, the rusted can was just the beginning of the mystery. But where had the coins come from? And were there more?
More Rusty Cans
At that moment, Liam only had one question spinning around in his mind: were there more coins stashed in the ground on the propert, waiting to be found?
There was only one way to find out. To his delight, with a little digging he started to uncover more rusted cans. How many would there be?
Excitting Windfall
Can after can was pulled from the earth, and coin after coin was found inside the old cans. The stash seemed never-ending.
Liam was thrilled with the unexpected windfall, after all, who actually finds buried treasure? The sheer scale of the coin hoard he had stumbled upon turned out to be jaw-dropping.
So Much Gold!
The coins were all identical to the ones that he had picked up from his dogs just a day before. What was going on? He wondered where the coins could have come from. Had someone hidden them here decades or even centuries ago?
Liam’s mind raced as he thought about all the possibilities. Then he came to his senses and dialed two numbers. One was his wife. The other was someone who could help.
An Expert
Liam called his wife and told her about the discovery he had just made. He explained how he had to stay behind to make sure nobody else found it. Even if it was his property, he didn’t want to take any chances.
His next phone call was to an expert who could identify the coins for him. As far as he knew, they could be worthless, but he had a hunch that they were very special.
Antique Coins
Most of the coins were from 1847 and 1894, making the coins over a century old, dating back to California’s Gold Rush days in the 1800s. But the date alone wouldn’t determine the true value of the coins, it was also the sheer volume.
Liam had unearthed a staggering total of 1,400 old coins–and even more surprising, they were in amazing condition.
Rare And Unusual
As soon as the excitement died down and an appraiser was called in, the couple was given the news. Most of the coins that they had found were $20 gold pieces, also known as double eagles. And the surprises just kept coming.
Douglas Mudd, the director and curator of the American Numismatic Association’s Money explained that some of the coins in the hoard were even rarer, such as the $5 piece known as a Dahlonega half eagle. But just where had the coins come from?
Hypothesis
The expert told Liam that the coins were hard to trace but were worth a fortune. They were at least a hundred years old and could fetch a value as high as 10 million dollars! And because he had found them on his property, he had every right to them.
But the man notified them that it was possible they were wrapped in a dark history that could jeopardize his chances of keeping the money.
An Enormous Hoard
When experts inspected the gold coins they speculated that, based on the dates of the coins and the cans they were found in, the coin hoard may have been slowly buried over a span of time. The total face value of the coins $28,000.
“That was a lot of money in the late 1800s,” Mudd explains. “A huge amount.” But who would have buried a fortune in the ground?
An Old Bank Robbery
There was a bank robbery in the early 20th century at the San Francisco Mint. It was a concern that these coins could be the same ones from the heist. The men who were caught never gave up the location after all.
But after considering it, the expert told Liam that they could never know for sure, and it was better to not linger on it. It was a hundred years ago anyway. Liam couldn’t believe that he had a claim to this fortune and all because of his wonder
Where Did They Come From?
“You get a lot of hoards in Europe—coins buried for hundreds or thousands of years,” says Mudd, “but they’re less common in the U.S. Our history isn’t that long, and for most of the time we’ve had banks, so people have tended to put their money there.”
So that leaves only a few likely explanations for the “Saddle Ridge Hoard,” as the collection has come to be known.
Shady History
The massive stash of coins was most probably buried on the couple’s land by an outlaw on the run, says Mudd. But just how much is the incredible find worth?
The answer to the coins’ estimated value is absolutely staggering, at $10 million in today’s market. But the question on everyone’s lips is: what will they do with all that money?
A Staggering Amount
Some of the rare gold coins were estimated to be worth $1 Million on their own! That is a sum of money most can only dream of.
But the extremely lucky and elated couple have decided to do the noble thing and pay off their outstanding bills, and then donate the rest of the valuable coins to various charities within their community.