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TIBURON (CBS SF) – A couple has made the buried treasure find of a lifetime – gold coins worth millions of dollars – on their property in Northern California. A cache of more than 1,400 rare U.S. gold coins, stored in decaying metal cans and buried near an old tree on the property, was discovered as the couple were taking their dog on a daily walk. The estimated value is believed to be in excess of $10 million and may be the most valuable hoard of gold coins unearthed in North America, according to veteran numismatist Don Kagin. Kagin, president...

<p>A Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.</p> <p>Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece.</p>

Archaeologists from around the UK have been examining a hoard of treasures unearthed in a 4,000-year-old tomb on Dartmoor. Prehistoric jewellery, animal pelts and beads made of amber were among the finds about two years ago in the burial chamber. The chamber, known as a cist, was found on Whitehorse Hill, near Chagford.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., A Connecticut rabbi who purchased a desk for less than $200 on Craigslist said he found $98,000 in cash hidden inside. Rabbi Noah Muroff of New Haven said he and his wife brought the desk home and discovered it would not fit through the door of their office without being disassembled, WTNH-TV, New Haven, reported Monday. "Behind the drawers there is this plastic bag, like a shopping," Muroff said. "In the bag, I could already see through the bag, it looks like a one hundred dollar bill. "We open it up and it's full of cash. And...

A treasure of precious jewels has been found by a young alpinist on the ice caps of Mont Blanc, where it likely was lost decades ago amid the wreckage of a crashed airliner. The chief commandant of the national police of Albertville, France, confirmed to NBC News that about a hundred small, precious stones were found in a metallic box in the ice caps known as Bossons. Commandant Sylvain Merly said the precious stones were separated in plastic bags that were stamped "Made in India." A local jeweler estimates the treasure to be worth between $175,000 and $325,000. The diamonds,...

After some initial digs, a Dutch filmmaker believes he may have found the site of buried Nazi treasure long rumored to exist. He was led to the Bavarian town of Mittenwald after cracking a code believed to be hidden in a music score. Three attempts have been made in recent weeks to find buried Nazi treasure in the Bavarian town of Mittenwald, close to the Austrian border. Even though the holes in the ground have since been filled, the traces left by drills and blue markings are still visible below a thin layer of autumn leaves. Authorities granted permission for...

New findings from an archaeological excavation led this winter by Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures prove that copper mines in Israel thought to have been built by the ancient Egyptians in the 13th century BCE actually originated three centuries later, during the reign of the legendary King Solomon.Based on the radiocarbon dating of material unearthed at a new site in Timna Valley in Israel’s Aravah Desert, the findings overturn the archaeological consensus of the last several decades. Scholarly work and materials found in the area suggest the mines...

During excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount which were conducted this summer, Jerusalem Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar discovered two bundles of a treasure containing thirty-six gold coins, gold and silver jewelry, and a gold medallion with the menorah (Temple candelabrum) symbol etched into it. Also etched into the 10-cm medallion are a shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll. Mazar, a third-generation archaeologist working at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, directs excavations on the City of David’s summit and at the Temple Mount’s southern wall, the Ophel area. Calling the find “a breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime discovery,”...

Several pieces of Viking jewelry, some of which contain gold, have been uncovered at a farm site in Denmark that dates as far back as 1,300 years. Although the Vikings have a popular reputation as being raiders, they were also farmers, traders and explorers, and the craftsmanship seen in this jewelry demonstrates their artistic skills. Archaeologists working with volunteers used metal detectors to find the jewelry in different spots throughout a farmstead on Zealand, the largest island in Denmark. The remains of the site, which is now called Vestervang, date from the late seventh to the early 11th centuries.

A dispute over ancient German treasure looted by Soviet troops at the end of the Second World War has overshadowed a visit by Angela Merkel to Russia.

A Florida man who went hunting for pythons in Florida’s Everglades returned instead with a mysterious treasure: an antique, diamond-studded gold medallion that could date back to the 17th century. How the handmade, penny-sized amulet got there is a riddle. One theory is it could have been aboard a ValuJet plane that crashed nearby in May 1996 – or that perhaps it was part of the debris field from an Eastern Airlines crash in the same area in 1972. The fact that it is partially melted on one side could support that idea. But wherever it came from, Mark Rubinstein,...

A New Mexico multimillionaire wants you to get off the couch and go searching for hidden treasure. Forrest Fenn, 82, believes too many Americans spend their free time watching TV or playing video games. He hopes the bounty he hid — a chest filled with millions of dollars in gold coins, diamonds and emeralds, among other gems — will prompt some to explore the outdoors. "Get your kids out in the countryside, take them fishing and get them away from their little hand-held machines," he told TODAY.

When James Labrecque listed an old safe—to which he did not have the combination—on eBay, the seller warned, "What you see is what you get, no returns, and no money back." A Tennessee man purchased it for $122.93, had a welder cut it open—and found $26,000 inside. The buyer shared the news with Labrecque via a positive review on the auction site, and Labrecque quickly attempted to convince the buyer to give him some of the cash, to no avail. In fact, WMC-TV reports, the buyer quoted Labrecque's own eBay disclaimer right back to him when turning him down. "I...

Just like a scene out of "Antiques Roadshow," a woman in Hartford, Conn., turned in an old rifle to her local police station's gun buy-back, only to discover the gun was worth anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, inherited the gun from her father who had brought it home with him from Europe as a memento from World War II. The two officers conducting the gun buy-back, who are resident gun experts for the Hartford Police Department, informed the owner she was in possession of a Nazi Assault Rifle, the first of its kind,...

It was buried among the legal ads in a local newspaper this week, nary two paragraphs long amid public notices from municipalities and legal name changes. It was a federal court announcement, but no ordinary one, from a treasure hunter announcing to "modern day pirates" that he was laying claim to a previously undiscovered Civil War-era shipwreck buried off the coast of Asbury Park — the maritime equivalent of a wedding officiant asking "if anyone has reason for these two not to be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace." The "groom" is Allan Gardner, a Florida diver who...

(Newser) – The flea market box lot was less than $50, and the buyer picked it up mostly for the Paul Bunyan doll it contained. But it turns out the box lot also contained an original painting by Renoir that could fetch up to $100,000 in an auction at the end of the month, reports the New York Times. The 5.5-inch-by-9-inch painting of the Seine riverside is believed to be Renoir's Paysage Bords de Seine. It was bought from a French gallery in 1925 and later sold to a Maryland collector, but art historians aren't sure when or how it...

Two wooden armchairs that were gathering dust in a Vancouver Island church for decades may prove to save the financially-challenged parish after they were discovered to be rare and valuable Qing dynasty treasures. They'd been there, in a quiet spot along the back wall of the St. Matthias Anglican Church in Victoria, possibly since the parish opened the doors of its new home nearly 50 years ago. Now the church, which has struggled to survive since a damaging schism over same-sex marriage in 2009, is poised for a potential windfall when the chairs are auctioned next month in New York,...

Family tradition has it that my grandfather buried numerous hoards throughout the township, however we have only one set of clues. Whenever I searched for the hoard I usually swept the area with a metal detector in case any other treasures happened to be near. My father, who I believe was in the know, said that the location of the hoard was a clue to finding other buried caches - one of them in a barrow containing my grandfather!

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

A suspected member of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, arrested in May last year in Germany, was found with a memory stick hidden in his underwear. Police discovered the stick contained a password-protected folder with pornographic videos inside it, but suspicious computer forensic experts thought there must be more. After weeks of analysis, they determined that one of the pornographic videos contained concealed documents detailing Al Qaeda operations and plans. The files were hidden in the video file through a process called steganography or concealed writing. The term steganography includes methods used for centuries, such as invisible ink, but now...