Coin Collection Treasure Find

   I remember Karl Von Mueller writing in "Treasure Hunter's Manual #7" about the wildly various places one can find hidden treasure troves, from the more commonly known hiding spots like floorboards in old houses and the insides of old trees to unusual places like windowsills and the undersides of old bureaus and the insides of lamps. Well, one of the hiding spots he mentioned was automobiles. Apparently, people's cars and trucks are a fairly common place for them to hide things. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. We spend a lot of time in our autos and they tend to not be out of our sight for very long. Hiding spots inside of automobiles can vary from wheel wells to the insides of seats and even deeply thought out and executed locations buried far inside of exhaust systems. 

  So, I was thrilled to hear a story yesterday from a close friend and co-worker (who shall remain nameless) about a coin collection he found hidden inside of a used car he bought. The car was over ten years old when he purchased it and he had owned the thing for at least a year before he discovered two narrow blue plastic boxes hidden under a flap of upholstery in the rear. Inside of the boxes, he found a beautiful collection of rare and foreign coins. The collection contains a nice lot of old silver dollars and half dollars, a roll of silver quarters, a half roll of silver dimes, commemorative coins, some fine British coins, a few large cents, and a wide variety of foreign pieces. Probably the most interesting item is a tiny little silver 1889 Queen Victoria "Jubilee Head" Maundy Penny, whose value I estimate to be between 125 and 150 dollars. Note the extremely diminutive size of the Jubilee Head when it is placed beside a penny in the final pic.

  My friend is now considering selling the whole lot, so I stayed up last night and tried to price them out. I am certainly no experienced numismatist, but as far as I can tell, the collection is worth somewhere between 500 and a 1000 dollars, which is probably more than he paid for the car. And to set the record straight, the original owners of the car were ultimately sought out and knew nothing of the coins.

  If anybody needs to get ahold of me this week, I will be in my driveway, tearing my truck apart piece by piece...