I wonder how these silver eagles found their way here? And freshly United States minted silver no less! Imagine walking alongside railroad tracks looking for firewood and instead sighting an interesting rectangular box. It’s green, sealed with two plastic bands and marked with symbols, saying "Treasury - United States Mint". Hmm…http://www.coinnews.net/2007/08/17/theres-silver-by-them-thar-tracks-3555/
As a railroad employee, I'll tell you, you'll find just about anything people buy along the tracks if you travel them long enough. Sometimes doors on containers come open and spill out boxes and merchandise for miles. Most of the time containers are opened by criminals who follow trains until they stop and then steal the contents of containers and trailers. My guess is they probably came out of such a trailer being broken into, as we haul UPS and FedEx. Just a month ago I ran over a 57 inch flatscreen that fell out of a container on the train ahead of me. there were about 2 dozen more, but that was the only one still on the rail. Guy~
Err... what? How do I figure into this Yankee? Anyway, this story is over two years old from 8.17.07 on CoinNews and there's very little written about it from online sources. The Paris News story was published on 5.22.2007. I simply don't understand how the story appears in 2007 but deals with sealed 1996 coins. That should offer some clues to suggest possible scenarios in tracking an owner, the Mint if lost for 10 years, and so on. It's also rather hard to believe that no one and no business ever came forward, reported such a loss to any shipping company, filed a police report, posted their loss online, notified dealers or pawn shops, bullion houses, placed any insurance claim nor contested the Herron's receipt of these coins after turning them in, especially since the Secret Service was contacted about this find by a local Sheriffs office. That Federal authorities were contacted might have gotten the Mint involved who ought to be able to track anything they'd be shipping or missing... Are not the green monster boxes only shipped from the Mint to the authorized bullion dealers and from there (reasonably) handled/protected/insured by armored car shipment if moved? Here's a link to The Paris News article with a few details not in the CoinNews write up.
Lucky couple. Funny how things turned out. No doubt if they had not been honest enough to turn them over and instead tried to hide them - they probably would have gotten caught and ended up in jail.
That looks just like this one. http://cgi.ebay.com/2006-SILVER-AMERICAN-EAGLE-500-COIN-MONSTER-BOX_W0QQitemZ300351102207QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCoins_US_Individual?hash=item45ee521cff&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
