From The Guardian: French officials perplexed by gold bars and coins found stashed in old house

[abqtommy]

I'd be happy to be perplexed in this way!

from article:

The surprise discovery of three jam jars filled with gold bars and hundreds of gold coins in an old building marked for renovation has left a mountain community in eastern France perplexed and celebrating.

The mayor of Morez, a small industrial town in a picturesque valley in the Jura, said the value of the find was more than €600,000 (£520,000). Town hall staff first found three jam jars of gold bars and coins worth €500,000 at the back of a dusty shelf, then opened a safe hidden behind boxes in a wardrobe to find up to €150,000 in gold coins.

The mayor, Laurent Petit, said the three-storey building in the town centre had been lived in by four brothers and sisters without children. When the last died in his 90s last year a relative offered to sell the building to the town hall for €130,000. Morez, like many other towns in France, was seeking to buy up and renovate old buildings to attract families back to its emptying centre.

“The house was packed with objects and furniture,” Petit said. “There had been several generations who didn’t throw anything away, kept everything and lived really frugally. I agreed we’d buy the property as it was and we’d gradually empty its contents ourselves.”

more text and photos at link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/french-officials-perplexed-gold-bars-and-coins-found-stashed-old-house

[DFW]

1. This happens a lot in France

Due to many wars, periods of hyper inflation, high taxes, etc., people in France used to stash away gold for many centuries. Actually, it has happened throughout history. I once saw a hoard of gold staters minted under Alexander the Great, buried in a clay jar some 2400 years ago, dug up about 30 years ago. All genuine, and with symbols of having been minted in various parts of his empire, from Pella to Tyre to Memphis. Even in the USA, eccentric millionaire LaVere Redfield’s house had something like 400,000 silver dollars hidden behind a wall in his basement. A couple in Northern California found over 100 old $20 gold coins stashed in a couple of old tin cans along a hiking trail on their property. The most recently dated piece was 1894. Or the famous Trésor de la Rue Mouffetard, buried behind the wall of a house in Paris around the time of the French revolution, and remained undiscovered until the house was renovated in the 1950s.

Of course, these are all dwarfed by some shipwrecks, both salvaged and not. The SS Central America is one still giving up her treasure 30 years after discovery, and that will probably be dwarfed by a Spanish galleon off the coast of Colombia, whose manifest listed gold that today is worth billions. That treasure still lies at the bottom of the ocean because Colombia wants it (their territorial waters), Spain wants it (their ship), and the salvors want it, since only they know exactly where it is, only they have the technology to raise the treasure undamaged, and only they invested the money to find it in the first place. My sentiments are with the salvors, as Spain wrote it off centuries ago, and Colombia wasn’t even a country at the time, and made no effort to find it when they were. A lot of lawyers will be rich before this one gets resolved.