(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Do you know what I do really well? I lose things.
I lose my glasses.
I lose my wallet.
I lose the TV remote.
Sometimes, I think I’m losing my mind.
Oddly enough, despite my penchant for losing stuff, I’m pretty good at finding things other people have lost. I am my wife’s go-to for locating missing items. Sometimes, I find her phone before she even realizes it’s missing.
I also have a pretty good track record of finding things other people have lost. But I’ve never found anything like what a couple of hikers in the Czech Republic stumbled upon.
As the duo was hiking a trail in the Podkrkonosí Mountains, they spotted a small aluminum can and an iron box.
I’m not sure what made them pick them up. The article in Popular Science said, “They didn’t look like much.” However, the hikers’ curiosity was rewarded when they opened the containers and found them packed with gold.
The box contained 16 snuff boxes, 10 bracelets, a wire bag, a comb, a chain, and a powder compact—all gold. And inside the can, there were 598 gold coins.
Now, that’s what I call a find!
Assessors at the Museum of Eastern Bohemia estimate our intrepid duo found about $340,000 in gold.
“When he opened it, my jaw dropped,” head archaeologist Miroslav Novak said.
The dates on the coins ranged from 1808 to 1915, and most of them originated in the Austria-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I.
It’s unclear how they ended up in the mountains of the Czech Republic.
Numismatist Vojtěch Brádle said the coins didn’t likely enter the region directly from the mint in Vienna.
“I found out that these coins did not travel from the Vienna mint to us, but to the Balkans. And there, after the collapse of the monarchy, in the then-Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, marks, so-called countermarks, were minted. … We know that the coins were in Serbia sometime in the 1920s and 1930s, but we have no idea how and when they got to eastern Bohemia.”
A countermark is a symbol, inscription, or mark impressed onto the coin after it was originally minted. This mark is typically added by a different authority or government than the one that produced the coin, generally to confirm its authenticity.
According to experts who examined the coins, some came from several other countries, including France, Belgium, Turkey, Romania, Italy, and Russia.
It’s possible the coins and valuables were buried when the Nazis annexed the region in the 1930s. It’s also possible that German soldiers buried the items when they retreated in the face of Russian forces. A less intriguing possibility is that thieves stole the items and buried them.
Whenever I hear stories like this, it always strikes me that gold and silver are always valuable, no matter how long they have been buried. If the hikers had stumbled across a box full of notes from the Weimar Republic, they would be utterly worthless (except for the historical value.) Heck, notes from the Weimar Republic were worthless when they were in circulation.
Can you imagine a hiker 500 years in the future finding a box of Federal Reserve notes? I have a feeling they won’t be worth much either.
However, gold and silver are money at all times and in all places. Gold and silver don’t decay or degrade. People around the world recognize their value. A hiker is going to be thrilled to find gold coins, whether they are in the Czech Republic, Guatemala, or the Sahara Desert today or 100 years from now.
I can only hope my penchant for finding things someday leads me to a can full of money!
And with that, I think I’ll go hiking.
Photo Credit: Museum of Eastern Bohemia
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
