Source: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business...

Over the next week, “John and Mary,” as the couple pseudonymously termed themselves, pulled seven more cans of gold from the ground. They were likely stashed there by a 19th-century local with minimal trust in banks. What became known as the Saddle Ridge Hoard comprised 1,427 coins, valued at $10 million. John and Mary kept them in an ice cooler buried under a woodpile in their yard.

Kagin and a colleague heard from John and Mary when the couple sought advice on selling their find. (Kagin is one of the only people who know John and Mary’s true identities.) A good numismatist is many things: a historian, certainly; but also an economist, an archeologist, an anthropologist, a metallurgist, an iconologist, and, in this case, a consigliere. The couple proposed hawking off the coins piecemeal; this turned Kagin into a moneyman in the traditionally remunerative sense. He convinced John and Mary that auctioning all the gold all at once, as a branded hoard, would fetch a higher price.

Kagin described the Saddle Ridge Hoard as “the single greatest buried treasure find in U.S. history” in a voice a notch or two calmer than one would expect. “The drama and mystique were as compelling as the gold itself.” Kagin believes that money tells us more about a civilization than any other type of artifact. “You’re buying the story when you buy a Saddle Ridge piece.”