The Saddle Ridge Hoard is believed to be the largest gold-cache find in history smashing the previous record that was set when a $1 million cache was found by construction workers in Jackson, Tennessee in 1985. The man (the couple, for obvious reasons, are remaining anonymous) said: “It was a very surreal moment. The Saddle Ridge Hoard is the largest discovery of gold in American history but no one has any idea where it came from. Product description 1863 $20 Saddle Ridge Hoard.This is the opportunity of a lifetime to invest in and own a piece of the greatest buried treasure find in the United States. The Saddle Ridge Treasure of 1427 gold coins is believed to be the greatest buried treasure ever unearthed in the United States. Product description 1863 $20 Saddle Ridge Hoard.This is the opportunity of a lifetime to invest in and own a piece of the greatest buried treasure find in the United States. The Saddle Ridge Treasure of 1427 gold coins is believed to be the greatest buried treasure ever unearthed in.

Who doesn’t wish to be rich overnight by discovering a treasure buried in the ground or by receiving a huge inheritance from a long lost relative? Stories such as these are incredibly fascinating as the very thought of becoming rich instantly is very tempting.

Most of the times, however, these are merely stories and legends. We can all dream, but how often does it really happen. Can a person actually go out and find lost treasure?

Extraordinary coincidences occur with ordinary people. Mysterious happenings that are truly awe-inspiring. One amazing story is that of the Saddle Ridge Hoard, a cache of gold coins valued in the millions!

This discovery is a true lost treasure tale that would inspire even the most skeptical to keep an eye to the ground on their next walk. It made the finders instant millionaires!

The Discovery

The Saddle Ridge hoard was discovered in February 2013, when a couple who owned the property were walking their dog in the morning. They spotted what appeared to be a rusted portion of a can and decided to unearth it. The rusted and deformed can was unusually heavy as if it were filled with iron or lead. It was very unusual and warranted further inspection.

The can was so heavy that while taking it back to their house, the lid of the can be cracked to open and reveal glistening gold coins! Not the sort of thing that you stumble across on the average day!

After that first can, the couple went back to the site to dig up the land in search of more cans filled with coins. Eventually, they unearthed a total of eight cans out from underground throughout their property on Saddle Ridge.

The couple has (wisely) since chosen to remain anonymous, along with the exact location of their property. This is to prevent potential treasure hunters from illegally metal detecting their property for more lost treasures.

We do, however, know that the property is somewhere in rural California and the treasure appears to have been hidden beneath the ground somewhere between 1847 and 1894.

Also Read: Metal Detecting in California – Coins, Relics & Buried Treasure

Value of the Hoard

Several old rusty cans containing the treasure of a lifetime! The Saddle Ridge Hoard contained over 1000 coins with an estimated total value of over $10 million dollars.

What makes the Saddle Ridge Hoard so amazing is the sheer scale and value of the hoard. The hoard has a total of 1,411 gold coins with a total face value of $27,980. The hoard has $27,460 worth of twenty-dollar coins and just $500 and $20 worth of ten and five-dollar coins. Sounds unimpressive, right?

Keep in mind those numbers are just the face value… which is actually just a fraction of the total value of these rare gold coins. The actual value of the coins in hoard has been estimated to stand at a whopping $10 million dollars. Now that is an impressive number! Imagine walking around and finding 10 million dollars in your backyard.

Even if you were just considering the melt value, we are talking about pounds and pounds of gold here. But the amazing thing about the coins in the Saddle Ridge Hoard is that a lot of them are in mint condition and quite a few of them are extremely rare.

Numismatists have evaluated the collection and stated that some individual coins area so rare that they are likely worth over $1 million dollars each!

Most of the coins were minted after 1854 in San Francisco, and these coincide with the Gold Rush era. However, some coins are older and minted in Georgia making the origin of the hoard even more mysterious.

Origin Theories of the Saddle Ridge Hoard

Quite a few theories are floating around when it comes to the origin of the Saddle Ridge Hoard. Aside from random individuals making unfounded claims that the treasure belonged to their great-great-great-long lost relative, some theories attempt to explain the source of the hoard. Here are just a few of these:

The 1901 San Francisco Mint Robbery

As the coins in the hoard are in impeccable condition, with many of them not even showing signs of ever being in circulation, this has many people linking them to the 1901 San Francisco Mint robbery. The robbery was done by the mint’s employee, Walter Dimmick, who stole an estimated $30,000 worth of coins. The value seems close to the amount found in the hoard and would explain the excellent condition of the coins.

Many have concluded that this is the most likely theory, but after a thorough investigation and research it has been concluded that there is no connection between the coins stolen by Dimmick and the coins found in the hoard.

This means that the treasure is not the property of the US government and rightfully belongs to the people who have discovered it.

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An Outlaw’s Hidden Bounty

Some people believe that the treasure is an outlaw’s stolen cache of gold. Jesse James and Black Bart, two very prominent highwaymen, are considered the major suspects. Both were well known for stealing from wealthy, and both had quite a prolific career.

This is certainly possible, but its also an “easy” guess without much evidence behind it. Yes, these were well-known outlaws who did indeed steal and rob throughout the Old West. However, a direct connection with a specific robbery and these specific coins have not been found.

Wealthy Individual with a Deep Mistrust for Banks

The most plausible till date seems to be that a wealthy person hid the coins under their property for safe keeping. They apparently did not trust the back and choose instead to have the coins buried underground. This was certainly not unheard of during this time. People did not trust banks and it many people buried their valuables.

Eventually, the treasure was either forgotten or the owner died without telling anyone where it was buried. This is a very good theory and in my estimation it is the most likely to be true.

Also Read: Emperor Maximilian’s Lost Mexican Treasure

A Final Word

There is a very good likelihood that we will never know with 100% certainty the true origin of the Saddle Ridge Hoard. We would like to think that people would have some idea of where thousands of gold coins might have come from. But is quite likely that a quiet recluse simply cached their life savings and then died, never telling anyone of his buried treasure.

One thing is for sure, the anonymous couple from California who made the discovery of a lifetime! In fact, it is easily one of the greatest treasure finds of our generation. Over $10 million dollars worth of gold coins hidden in the California mountains… truly the kind of lost treasure tale that people dream about!

Next: 7 Things to Consider When Searching for Buried Caches

Also Read:22 Metal Detector that Punch DEEP on Coins & Relics

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The 'Saddle Ridge Treasure' is what many are calling the now-historic discovery of $10 million worth of gold coins buried in decaying tin cans on the property of one very lucky — and anonymous — California couple.

These 1,427 Liberty head coins were minted between 1855 and 1894, and were actually discovered a year ago in eight canisters dotting the couple’s Northern California property. The 19th century coinage has since been authenticated by Kagin’s, a California-based agency that authenticates U.S. currency, and the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS). Next week, a sampling of the coins will go on display at the American Numismatic Association National (ANA) Money Show in Atlanta.

See also: Californian Couple Finds $10 Million Worth of Gold Coins in Tin Can

As people look over the plastic-encased coins, each with a special gold-colored “Saddle Ridge Hoard” PCGS certification foil, they may wonder where such a hoard came from.

We may have found the answer.

“It’s extremely unusual to find this many U.S. coins, especially gold, all together in one place. It’s a very special and unusual hoard,” said ANA Director Douglas Mudd, who also served as collection manager at the Smithsonian Institution National Numismatic Collection for over a decade.

Mudd told Mashable that while stockpiles of paper and even coin U.S. currency have been found before, the next largest discovery was worth $4,500 in face value (not the market value of the gold, but the denomination total). According to the PCGS, the majority of these coins are $20 denomination Liberty Double Eagles struck at the San Francisco Mint. With approximately 1,400 gold coins, that gives them a total face value of roughly $28,000 — remember that number.

The coins were found in badly decaying, unmarked tins buried — some up to 1 foot deep — somewhere in Northern California. Safe to say that someone didn’t want them to be found.

Even Mudd wonders about the circumstances. “How did $28,000, which was a lot of money back then, come to be buried in that spot?”

Mudd said there are a number of ways such a hoard is created. Often, they come from people who didn't trust banks, stashing away all their money in a hiding spot — like a mattress, underground vault or tin they buried in the back yard — which was known only to them. They die before retrieving their stored cash, and someone else stumbles upon it years later.

The other option is more of the classic movie western style where bandits make off with the money, but with the authorities in hot pursuit. So they bury the loot and come back later to retrieve it — unless they never get to.

“There are a lot of possibilities, but I haven’t heard anything to suggest what could have happened,” said Mudd.

There are, of course, ways to figure out what happened. The Kagin company, which is overseeing the Saddle Ridge Exhibition and sale of the coins on Amazon.com, hasn’t offered much information about the provenance of the coins, but Mudd says they could potentially date the cans “if there’s enough info on them.”

Kagin’s Communication Director Kirsten Marquette told Mashable, however, “I’ve seen the cans in person and you can’t see anything on them. They’re rusted.”

Another option is doing a lost property or theft search.

“Was there a major theft or did something happen where these coins went missing at some point?” pondered Mudd.

Smoking Gun?

Considering that these coins had probably been buried for more than a century, we dug through microfiche files from old California newspapers, ones that were in print in the 19th century, like the San Jose Mercury News. Luckily, Google has been digitizing a tremendous amount of dead-tree media, including out-of-print books, magazines and newspapers.

A search on Books.google.com for “stole,” “1000,” “gold,” “coins,” “from” “San Francisco.” brings up a curious note from an the Bulletin of The American Iron and Steel Association, an industry newsletter published every two weeks by an organization now known as the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Tucked into the Aug. 10, 1901 issue, between political and financial notes and the latest obituaries was this little tidbit:

“The sum of $30,000 in gold coin has recently been stolen from the vault of the cashier of the San Francisco Mint. No trace has been found of the missing gold.”

We were unable to find any other reference to that theft or any similar theft within any other archive document, so we reached out to the source.

When Mashable first spoke to American Iron and Steel Institution Manager of Communications Rachel Gilbert about the bulletin, she had no idea what we were talking about. “We deal with iron and steel. We do not cover the gold industry. Maybe you should try to talk to the gold institute.”

Still, she agreed to take a look at the link and get back to us.

A few hours later Gilbert confirmed that the Bulletin was from the AISI (then known as the American Iron and Steel Institute). “At the top of the document it lists the leadership staff of institute at that time. I was able to verify that it was us.” She told Mashable that the staff at the AISI was “pretty amused” by the discovery and thought she might spend some time perusing the century-old newsletters.

Stolen Coins

Obviously, the report of the theft comes six years after the latest mint date on the Saddle Ridge Hoard coins. Still, if the coins were taken from the Mint cashier, they may have pulled them from a certain area where similar denominations and mintings were all gathered together. The news was big enough that it made an industry trade sheet, but owing to how news traveled back then, it did not become legendary.

Perhaps the thieves did as Mudd imagined. They had their hoard, but were being chased and simply buried all of it with a plan to return, dig it up and live a very happy life.

When we contacted the U.S. Mint to see if they have any records of such a theft, Adam Stump deputy director, Office of Corporate Communications quickly deflated our balloon, “We have no information linking those coins to any thefts at any United States Mint facility. Surviving agency records from the San Francisco Mint have been retired to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), under Record Group 104. Access to the records is under NARA’s jurisdiction: http://www.archives.gov/”

Saddle Ridge Hoard Update

Apparently Stump forgot about Walter Dimmick. According to a post on the U.S. Mint’s own “H.I.P. Pocket Change” children’s website, Dimmick worked as a chief clerk at the San Francisco Mint between, according to AlteredDimensions, 1898 and 1901. In a post called “Thieves Among Us,” the U.S. Mint describes how the San Francisco Mint discovered that six bags of gold coins worth $30,000 had gone missing.

Since [Dimmick] had already been caught learning to sign the Superintendent's name (forgery), taking money from the pay envelopes of other Mint employees (theft), and stealing other government funds in his care, a jury eventually found him guilty of stealing the $30,000 in gold double eagles and of two other charges.”

Dimmick went to prison and the 1,500 gold coins were never found.

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Until, perhaps, now.