A stash of gold and silver coins secretly buried to keep it from the Nazis is expected to fetch a staggering £75 million at auction.
The incredible hoard – thousands of coins wrapped in paper bags and tucked away in cigar boxes – was hidden in a family garden as war loomed in Europe.
According to auctioneers Numismatica Ars Classica, the glittering fortune was built up by a wealthy collector in the 1930s.
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Fearing for his family’s safety as Nazi forces advanced, the man buried the coins.
But tragedy struck when he suffered a stroke and died soon after German troops arrived.
The auction house, which has chosen to keep the family’s name and location secret, said the collector had recorded his vast purchases in notebooks written in several languages.
He reportedly stored parts of his collection across several continents before settling in Europe with his wife and daughter just before the outbreak of World War II.
His widow, aware that something valuable was buried, didn’t know exactly what was hidden beneath the soil – and only told her family about it decades later, in the 1990s, as reported by Need To Know.
The treasure finally came to light in 2022, with the entire collection now insured for an eye-watering £76 million ($100m).
Numismatica Ars Classica, based in Zurich, Switzerland, has dubbed it the “Traveller Collection”, with the owners choosing to remain anonymous.
Of the 15,000 coins amassed from around the world, around 500 from Europe will go under the hammer in Zurich this Thursday (6 November).
One of the star items is a 100-ducat gold coin depicting Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, said to be the size of a beer mat – and it’s expected to fetch at least £944,760 (CHF 1 million) on its own.
The coin, minted in Prague in 1629, weighs 346 grams of pure gold and was originally created as a prestige piece for rulers, diplomats and treasuries.
Christian Stoess, who compiled the auction catalogue, said: “This was one of the highlights of my professional life.
“Something like this only comes along once every 100 years.
“You can see from some of the coins that they were buried for a long time.
“I don’t find it unbelievable that the widow left the collection buried for so long, where it survived the Nazis.”
Many of the rare coins are believed to have once belonged to American banker Waldo Newcomer, who was forced to sell his collection during the Great Depression of the late 1920s.
