The amazing thing is: these little hoards are all over the world. Buried under a tree, down a well, next to the fireplace hearth, they are all over.
From Malaysia's Malay Mail, September 30:
French home renovation yields golden treasure of €1m
Hundreds of rare gold coins dug out of the walls of a remote French mansion fetched more than €1 million at an auction. — Reuters pic
ANGERS, Sept 30 — Hundreds of rare gold coins dug out of the walls of a remote French mansion fetched more than €1 million (RM4.85 million) at auction on Wednesday.
Stonemasons discovered 239 pieces of gold, minted before the French Revolution, when they began renovating the property near Quimper in the western Brittany region, auctioneers Ivoire/Deloys said.
The family kept four coins as souvenirs and put the rest up for auction in the western town of Angers, with an estimated value of €250,000-300,000.
Bidding opened at €8,000 for a very rare double Louis d’Or, depicting Louis XIV and dating back to 1646. It went for €46,000, the same price as a Louis d’Or from Paris dated 1640 and stamped with the Templar’s Cross.....
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I've mentioned I was asked by a very wealthy client to answer his question re: gold as an investment during times of deflation. Barrick had just purchased Homestake in 2001 and equities were still heading toward the bottom of their gruesome March 2000 - September 2002 bear market (down 77% on the Nasdaq) So I thought I should look at what the folks at HM were actually writing during the Great Depression. As noted elsewhere:
....After the mine closed in 2002 I went out to Lead to answer the question "Is gold an asset you want to own during deflation?" I was quite possibly the last person with access to the company records from the '30's. The skeleton staff that Barrick had in place for the shutdown were literally boxing documents for the archivists as I sat there....
In addition to the archivists I got to know the librarians at the Deadwood Public Library.
They would tell me stories about the little "nuggets" they came across during their researches and over and over again they'd mention some miner in the surrounding district (425 mines) who went to town, got drunk and fell down a shaft or otherwise killed themselves on the way home from the saloons.
And over and over again there were rumors of miner's pokes in their wild west version of safe deposit, a hole under the corner of their tents or little cabins.
And there were enough of these found years later, not big mind you, three, five, ten ounces of gold at a time, there were enough found that the librarians would try to estimate just how much of the stuff was out there.
Here is the auctioneer on the French find, Deloys.
The "Golden Louis with a long curl" that fetched €46,000 was estimated before the auction at 15,000 euros.
