Whoever bundled and buried the huge hoard of gold coins in a canvas bag in the dirt never returned.
“Probably they were killed, that’s my guess,” Kentucky rare coin expert Jeff Garrett, 66, told The Epoch Times, speaking of whoever owned what is now the “Great Kentucky Hoard.”
Fighting during the Civil War spilled onto Kentucky soil when, around 1863, banks in the state were being robbed and Morgan’s Raiders incurred, destroying railroads, bridges, and telegraph lines to thwart Union forces.
Somebody probably stashed their valuables, some 800 gold coins, under the earth “as a safety measure,” said Mr. Garrett, former president of the American Numismatic Association.
He has “no details about where it was” found, he said, except that a farmer somewhere in Kentucky, who wished to remain anonymous, called him after unearthing the massive Civil War-era hoard wanting help selling them.
That was about $1,200 during the Civil War—a lot of money back then.
Traces of a canvas bag stuck to one of the coins told the finders that they were stowed here purposefully. “The person who buried them probably expected to come get them pretty soon afterwards and never made it back,” Mr. Garret said.
Among the rarest specimens were 18 “double eagle” gold coins each weighing one ounce, worth some $100,000 a piece. One or two of the double eagles were in “amazing condition” while the rest were less so, said Mr. Garrett, who assured us that “they’re genuine.”
The rest consisted of mostly gold dollars weighing a twentieth of an ounce, about the size of a dime.
The latest coin was dated “1863,” allowing him to date the find.
Some of the coins look as new as the day they were minted, a trait he attributes to the precious yellow element. “That’s what’s good about gold,” he said. “There’s Roman coins that look like the day they were made because gold does not corrode.”
In his 40 years working with rare coins, he said he’s not encountered a hoard of such significance.
“It’s just unbelievable. I mean, it’s almost like it’s too good to be true,” Mr. Garrett said. “[This find is] a once-in-a-lifetime for [the farmer], probably once-in-a-lifetime for me.”
