Gold and Silver Coins Found Buried Under a House

The doors to the Bellevue store opened and in walked a family — mother, father and three children — absolutely covered in dirt. “Even their car was dusty,” says Adam Richey of West Seattle Coins and Bellevue Rare Coins. “They walked in with these filthy paint buckets in their hands, all of them giddy and grinning.”

Adam asked, “Where did you get all this?” and the father answered, “Well, we dug it up!” The family began opening the paint cans and telling him their story. Their children’s grandparents had recently passed away, and as part of their will they left a map and blueprint of the house they’d built decades earlier. On the map were the details of where to find the treasure that the grandparents had buried before building their home.

“So the family gets their shovels and they go under the house — the grandparents had left enough space for someone to stand up in the crawlspace — and they start digging,” Adam says. At first, they found nothing, despite digging in the spots indicated on the map. “They got frustrated, but kept their spirits up and kept digging. Finally, one of the kids hit something.”

It was a paint can filled with silver and gold coins from the early 1900s. All of them were dirty and there was a little tarnish on some of them, but the metal was in pretty good condition. Soon, they hit another can. And another. And another.

They loaded the cans in their car and drove straight to Bellevue Rare Coins. “They had their minds set on selling to us,” Adam says. “They said to me, ‘We got our loot and drove straight to Bellevue Rare Coins!'”

So there they all are in the middle of the Bellevue store, opening up dusty paint cans full of silver and gold. “I popped open one of the paint cans — it was a pretty standard way to store silver back in the day — and dust clouds started to form in the store. Everybody was super-excited. The parents were trying to educate the kids, and I gave them a little 101 about the history of these old coins,” Adam says.

Adam went through all the cans with the family, discussing the historical importance and value of the coins they’d dug up. After his evaluation, he told the family that the gold and silver they had brought in that day was worth close to $250,000. “I gave them a check right there,” says Adam. “They said they were going to use it to pay off their house and all their bills and loans. They left with big smiles on their faces.”

While an amazing tale like this doesn’t happen every day at West Seattle Coins and Bellevue Rare Coins, our coin, gold and silver experts will always give you an honest evaluation of your valuables. So even if you don’t have a map to an inheritance; check the attic, check the garage, check under the house. You just might be sitting on some treasure of your own.