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Message:: [QUOTE="Owle, post: 1313709, member: 22004"]If it's a rare date though, do you really think the thief is going to melt it down?  Branch mint gold, Civil War rare gold coins, early gold coins where the numismatic value is 100X the gold value, what would you do if you were the thief?  Hold on to it waiting for a propitious moment to get an offer from a dealer or collector?  Find a doctor to tone it out for you to disguise the appearance, "orange peel" it? At that point if it had been in a nice AU/BU holder it would be harder to indentify, and as a raw coin there is going to be someone who likes the coin even though doctored and puts out 50% of its original slabbed value.  On the 1870-CC $20, I would crack it, put it in with a bunch of other gold coins, ship it to Russia or Asia, to a contact who would try to find an unscrupulous shady drug or Ponzi-style scammer, who would pay $100K+ to have a coin like that in his collection. The advantage with stolen currency is that thieves have no where to go outside of the scope of law enforcement to get top dollar.[/QUOTE]