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.”

This composite image shows the The American Iron and Steel Association Bulletin and the key news item, which we've highlighted.

Sounds like the Bitcoin heist.