Kentucky farmer finds over 700 gold coins in cornfield

A Civil War hoard of over 700 gold coins has been discovered in a cornfield in Kentucky. This find at least partly confirmed the Civil War legends of lost gold that have driven American treasure hunters for more than 150 years. Writes about it The New York Times.

Photo: IStock

The discovery, which coin dealers have dubbed the Great Kentucky Treasure, was made on a farm by a man who wished to remain anonymous.

In a video posted on YouTube on June 9, a man can be seen frantically counting mountains of dirt-covered coins.

“This is the craziest thing in the world,” he said, pointing to coins that were later certified by the Numismatic Guaranty Company as genuine $1, $10, and $20 gold coins minted before and during the Civil War.

On the subject: A family found a treasure trove of gold coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars under the floor of their house

GovMint.com, a coin dealer who now sells the coins, has valued one gold dollar from the collection at about $1000. As of the morning of July 16, these coins were already sold out.

One type of coin has attracted the particular attention of numismatists: the gold double-headed Liberty Eagles, minted in 1863, which today are valued at auctions from a few thousand up to $381, depending on their condition and time of minting.

Since GovMint.com is selling several double-headed eagles from the hoard for more than $100, the total value of the treasure could exceed $000 million.

The buried treasure included several coins minted in 1862 and 1863, when Kentucky was the site of fierce battles between the United States and the Confederacy.

The Kentucky government initially declared the state neutral in the Civil War, but abandoned this policy and sided with the Union after the Confederacy invaded western Kentucky in September 1861. The state was politically divided, with Kentuckians fighting on both sides of the conflict.

According to the Numismatic Guaranty Company, the coins may have been buried during this period to protect them from an invading army.

Ryan McNutt, a conflict archaeologist at Georgia Southern University, said the hoard may have been buried before a devastating Confederate raid by General John Morgan in the summer of 1863.

Of another raid by a general in Kentucky in 1864, one of his soldiers described it this way: "Bank robbed, stores looted, plundering private property everywhere."

Many treasure hunters have found treasures that were buried during the Civil War era, giving rise to legends and rumors of vast fortunes, some of which have been lost.

Efforts to find these treasures compete fiercely with each other.

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After the FBI dug up an area in rural Pennsylvania that was rumored to be a hoard of lost Civil War gold, treasure hunters accused the FBI of a cover-up, claiming the agency covered up the discovery of the gold and took it for themselves.

This may explain why the man who discovered the treasure in Kentucky still prefers to remain anonymous.

It is not clear how he found the gold and whether he suspected that the treasure was buried on the farm. Despite the secrecy, some fans say the mysterious treasure hunter's efforts haven't gone far enough.

“I would never even think about publishing this find on the World Wide Web so that everyone could see it,” says a comment on YouTube under a video about the discovery of the treasure. “Keep this hiding place a secret.”

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