Discovery! Kentucky man finds over 700 Civil War-era coins buried in his cornfield

If you live in Kentucky during the Civil War, it was a thing to do to bury huge sums of money to prevent it from being stolen by the Confederacy, so get out your metal detectors in certain places! One farmer found a hoard of coins from that era. Here's the story:

(Photo:  About 95% of the hoard is composed of gold dollars dating to the Civil War-era. (Image credit: Numismatic Guaranty Co.)

 Kentucky man finds over 700 Civil War-era coins buried in his cornfield 

NewsBy Kristina Killgrove , July 10, 2023 LIVE SCIENCE

A man unearthed a huge hoard of Civil War-era gold and silver coins on his Kentucky farm.

A Kentucky man got the surprise of his life while digging in his field earlier this year: a cache of over 700 coins from the American Civil War era.

The "Great Kentucky Hoard" includes hundreds of U.S. gold pieces dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins. In a short video, the man who discovered the hoard — whose identity and specific location have not been revealed to the public — says, "This is the most insane thing ever: Those are all $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins," as he aims his camera at the artifacts tumbling out of the dirt.

According to the Numismatic Guaranty Co. (NGC), which certified the coins' authenticity, and GovMint, where the coins were sold, 95% of the hoard is composed of gold dollars, along with 20 $10 Liberty coins and eight $20 Liberty coins. 

The rarest is the 1863-P $20 1-ounce gold Liberty coin. Just one of these coins can go for six figures at auction, and the Great Kentucky Hoard boasts 18 of them. NGC's website notes that the $20 Liberty coin, which circulated from 1850 to 1907, was minted by the Treasury Department after gold was discovered in California. 

The $20 Liberty coins in the hoard are even rarer because they do not include "In God We Trust," which was added in 1866 after the end of the Civil War.

Potentially more important, though, is what the hoard can tell us about America's history during an extremely tumultuous period.

The Farmer's video of his discovery: https://youtu.be/0JDUdmp-L3Q

Ryan McNutt, a conflict archaeologist at Georgia Southern University who has heard about but not seen the hoard, told Live Science in an email that "given the time period and the location in Kentucky, which was neutral at the time, it is entirely possible this was buried in advance of Confederate John Hunt Morgan's June to July 1863 raid."

Many wealthy Kentuckians are rumored to have buried huge sums of money to prevent it from being stolen by the Confederacy. James Langstaff left a letter saying he had buried $20,000 in coins on his property in Paducah, William Pettit buried $80,000 worth of gold coins near Lexington, and Confederate soldiers quarantined for measles reportedly stole payroll and hid it in a cave in Cumberland Gap. None of these caches has ever been recovered.