'It's like finding
a Picasso at a garage sale': 'Fake' coin from California Gold
Rush is actually REAL and worth MILLIONS and its owner had no
idea. by MOLLIE CAHILLANE
FOR DAILYMAIL.COM | PUBLISHED: 10:11 EDT, 25 April 2018 | UPDATED:
11:52 EDT, 25 April 2018
'It's like finding a Picasso
at a garage sale': 'Fake' coin from California Gold Rush
is actually REAL and worth MILLIONS and its owner had no
idea.
A rare $5 coin from
the California Gold Rush has been found in New England
Its owner thought it
was fake but the coin is actually worth millions
The Numismatic Guaranty
Corporation authenticated it and identified it as one
of four surviving 1854 special coins produced by the San
Francisco Mint
The owner wishes to
remain anonymous and has not said where he found it
An incredibly rare coin
from the California Gold Rush is worth millions - and its
owner didn't have a clue.
The San Francisco Mint produced fewer than
300 special edition $5 coins, and it was thought that only
three survived.
The anonymous owner of the discovered fourth
coin believed the piece to be fake, as did multiple coin
dealers
However, the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation
(NGC), the world's largest rare coin authentication company,
proved it to be real by comparing it to the three known
coins.
The 164-year-old treasure is now worth millions
of dollars, according to the NGC.
'It's like finding an original Picasso at
a garage sale. It's the discovery of a lifetime,' said Mark
Salzberg, NGC Chairman to PR Newswire.
'The owner of the coin is a life-long New
England resident who wants to remain anonymous. He was stunned
when we informed him that it is a genuine, multi-million
dollar rare coin,' Salzberg said.
'He had shown it to a few collectors and
dealers at a recent coin show, but everybody said they thought
it was a fake because until now there were only three genuine
surviving 1854 San Francisco Mint $5 gold pieces known,'
he said.
One of the three known coins was stolen
from the Du Pont family in 1967 and never recovered. After
it was confirmed this was not the missing coin, it was then
compared to high-resolution photos from the Smithsonian,
where one of the coins is kept.
'We look for common things that you’ll
see between the coins,' Richard Montgomery, president of
NGC, told Gizmodo.
'You’ll see the four in the digit
is slightly attenuated or not as high in relief as the regular
part of the four. We noticed that was exactly the same as
the Smithsonian piece.'