Some lives were changed recently:
Gold
Treasure Found Inside A British Piano
(Mercury News) — British officials say they've been unable to trace the
rightful heirs to a trove of gold coins found stashed inside a piano and
worth a "life-changing" amount of money.
The Shropshire school that owns the piano and the tuner who found the gold
are now in line for a windfall after a coroner investigating the find
declared it treasure. The couple who owned the piano for three decades before
donating it to the school will likely miss out.
Coroner John Ellery said Thursday that, despite a thorough investigation
and a public appeal for information, "we simply do not know" who
concealed the coins.
The 913 gold coins which were found in a piano, are displayed at Ludlow
Museum in Ludlow, England Thursday April 20, 2017, where they are being kept
under lock and key.
The hoard was discovered last year when the piano was sent for tuning.
Under the keyboard — neatly stacked in hand-stitched packages and pouches —
were 913 gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns minted in the 19th and early
20th centuries.
Piano tuner Martin Backhouse said when he found the pouches and slit open
the stitching, he thought: "Ooh, it looks like there's rather a lot of
gold in this."
The hoard, which weighs 13 pounds, has not been formally valued. But Peter
Reavill of the British Museum has said it is worth a "potentially
life-changing" amount.
Revenue from items declared "treasure" is generally split
between the owner — in this case, Bishops Castle Community College — and the
finder.
The piano was owned for 33 years by Graham and Meg Hemmings, who donated
it last year to the school close to their home, near the Welsh border about
45 miles west of Birmingham. Meg Hemmings said she's not bitter at missing
out on treasure that was right under her nose.
"The sadness is, it's not a complete story," she said.
"They've looked and searched for the people and they unfortunately
haven't come forward.
Man
Discovers $2.4 Million in Gold in Ex-Army Tank
(Popular Mechanics) - A tank collector in the United Kingdom was in for a
surprise when he and his mechanic opened one of his tank's diesel fuel tanks.
Inside were gold bars totaling approximately $1.2 million dollars.
The tank came into possession of Nick Mead, a tank collector and owner of
Tanks Alot, a company that offers tanks and other armored vehicles for
driving classes, private events, and television and film appearances. Mead
found the tank, an ex-Iraqi Army Type 69, on sale on eBay and traded it for
an Abbot self-propelled howitzer and a British Army truck.
Mead and his mechanic, Todd Chamberlain, were filming the opening of the
fuel tank because they had already found machine gun ammunition in the
armored vehicle and wanted video proof in case more ammunition was found.
They pulled out five gold bars weighing about twelve pounds worth an
estimated $2.4 million. The gold was handed over to authorities, and Mead has
placed a receipt for the bars of bullion in a safe deposit box.
There are two ways to react to such stories. The first is from the point
of view of the finder, which is obviously "AWESOME!!!"
The second is to consider the person who hid the gold in the first place
and realize what a horrendous failure it represents. Someone saves for a
lifetime (or audaciously steals or otherwise acquires real wealth), and
rather than trusting the banking/currency system, hides that wealth in
physical form, either for their own future enjoyment or their descendants'
security. This kind of wealth really can change the course of many future
generations.
But they made a big mistake. They didn't tell anyone, or they told the
wrong person, or they failed to plan for some other event that broke the link
between gold hoard and owner/beneficiary. And so the gold is lost until found
by strangers.
This is profoundly, tragically sad. It's also an object lesson for anyone
who hears and takes to heart the idea that "gold in hand" is the
only truly safe way to store real wealth. Because while true in theory, this
involves serious challenges in practice. How, for instance, do you hide gold
and silver so that it's both undetectable by the wrong people and accessible
to the right ones? Whom do you tell so that it will never be stolen but also
never lost and forgotten?
These are questions with different answers for every situation. But they
have to be asked and correctly answered for gold in hand to be truly a safe.
