A COUPLE found $10million in gold coins mysteriously buried in their back garden – but there's an incredible twist.
The Northern California couple – who don't want to be identified – were out walking their dog when they spotted a decaying canister poking out of an old tree and decided to take it back home.
What the husband and wife thought was piece antique rubbish turned out to be one of the biggest hoard of gold coins ever unearthed in the US.
There were 1,427 gold coins dating from 1847 and 1894 and all up, they equalled $27k but some of the them are so rare they could fetch $1m apiece.
"I don't like to say once-in-a-lifetime for anything, but you don't get an opportunity to handle this kind of material, a treasure like this, ever," said veteran antique coin collector Don Kagin, who represented the finders.
"It's like they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
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He said the middle-aged couple, who want to remain anonymous to avoid a renewed gold rush on their property, had no idea who put them there.
The couple made the incredible find on their Gold Country estate and dug it out using a stick.
At first, they thought it may have been a discs covered in dirt from holes rotted through the can.
Instead, they were perfectly preserved $20 gold coins with liberty head designs on the front.
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The couple ran back to the spot and dug up another seven cans.
In total, there were 1,373 $20 coins, 50 $10 coins and four $5 coins and most were minted in San Francisco.
"It was a very surreal moment. It was very hard to believe at first," the man said in an interview.
"I thought any second an old miner with a mule was going to appear."
It's being dubbed the Saddle Ridge Hoard, after the spot on the couple's property where it was found.
"You hear all those Wild West stories of buried treasure, and you think they're fantasies – well here, this one really did happen," Kagin said.
"And what is almost unbelievable about this collection is what pristine condition so many of them are in."
The first thing the family did following the find was rebury the cans in a cooler under their woodpile while they thought about what to do.
About 90 percent of the coins were posted on Amazon.com's Collectibles site while the rest were privately told to avid collectors.
The oddest of the bunch was an 1866 $20 coin without the words "In God We Trust" on the back – which weren't added to those coins until later that year.
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The couple are said to have donated some of the proceeds to the homeless and hungry in their area.
They've also kept a few for keepsakes while paying some 47 percent of their bounty to state and federal tax authorities.
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