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Posted By: barrysloate

Anyone involved in coins remember the Redfield silver dollar hoard of 1976? Lavere Redfield was an eccentric and reclusive millionaire who lived alone in a mansion in Las Vegas and who in the 1950's and 1960's secured unopened bags of Morgan silver dollars (1000 to a bag, as issued by the Mint) and stashed them away quietly. When he died around 1975, word got out that he had these dollars but nobody could find them. The IRS even sent agents to his home looking for them to no avail. Then one agent noticed a wall in his basement that didn't look right. They took the wall down and behind it they found over 400,000 silvers dollars, many of them uncirculated bags of really rare dates. They also found among the bags cartons of canned peaches, which exploded because of the Las Vegas heat covering many of the dollars with peach juice. The collection was sold in its entirety, virtually sight unseen, for $7.3 million. Today, it might be worth over $50 million. Many of the rare silver dollars we have today came out of this hoard. It is perhaps the most famous hoard in numismatic history.