Monday, August 13, 2018

8/13/18 Report - Valuable Coin Collection Dug Up In Backyard. Famous Selby Gold Heist. Big Low Tide Today.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Beautiful Encased Proof Set Among Coins Dug Up In Back Yard.
Source: CoinWorld link below.

An eight-coin 1876 Proof set containing silver and minor coinage, buried by its owner in the backyard of his Chicago home more than two decades ago, was brought for authentication and grading April 27 to the Central States Numismatic Society convention in Schaumburg, Illinois, by the late owner’s son...
The late collector, who died in 1994 at age 84, suffered with Alzheimer’s disease the last five years of his life, according to his son. The son said there’s a possibility that his father may have buried his entire extensive collection of United States coins. The coins, which have been off the market for more than 50 years, were primarily silver and gold issues.
In a May 3 interview with Coin World, the son, who requested anonymity, indicated his father collected a lot of U.S. gold coins, focusing on his birth year of 1915. Asked how many coins he had dug up from his father’s backyard, the son indicated he didn’t have a firm count but he had weighed them all, and combined they weighed “in the pounds.”
Here is the link for the rest of the article.
https://www.coinworld.com/news/us-coins/2018/05/family-finds-1876-proof-set-buried-in-yard.html

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Story of the Selby Gold Heist.

"I committed the greatest robbery of the century and I did it alone."

So bragged Jack Winters, a.k.a. Buck Taylor, after he stole gold bullion worth $283,000 — the equivalent of about $17 million today — from the Selby Smelting Works in Contra Costa County on Aug. 5, 1901...

"I made fourteen trips from my tunnel to the wharf where I lowered the bullion into the bay," Winters told reporters in an Aug. 12, 1901, Chronicle article. "I made a mark on the wharf where I dropped each bar, so that I could readily find them."

By then dawn was breaking, and Winters was running out of time. He left behind $130,000 of gold, and in his haste, dropped two bars on the beach. Still, he was able to submerge more than $283,000 in bullion in the bay and make his getaway.

When Selby employees opened vault the next morning, they found the hole in the floor and almost 900 pounds of gold missing. No one suspected a one-man job: the prevailing theory was that a gang of crooks tunneled to the gold, hauled it through a railroad tunnel and loaded it on a boat moored in the bay off Vallejo Junction...


For more of that article on the Selby gold heist, here is the link.


Imagine strolling along and seeing one of those gold bars on the beach?

Is any of it still out there to be found?  Could be.
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There is still a disturbance in the middle of the Atlantic, but don't expect it to affect us at all.

There is going to be an unusually low tide this afternoon.  Maybe you can take advantage of that.  The surf will be smooth too.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net