Carson City, Nev., officials have hit pay dirt. Cleanup crews called to empty the home of recently deceased recluse Walter Samaszko Jr. found a stash of gold — and taxes will eat up half of it.
Among the treasure trove: gold coins, some of them a century old. The Associated Press reports that crews uncovered in neatly stacked ammunition boxes more than 2,900 coins from Austria, more than 5,000 from Mexico, 500 from Britain and 300 from America. The dates of minting for some went as far back as 1880, AP says.
Half of the findings will be auctioned to pay for Samaszko’s outstanding $800,000 estate taxes and fees, AP says. Leftover proceeds will benefit Samaszko’s first cousin, a substitute teacher in California, according to the report.
Professional coin collectors are hitting the auction hard.
“They’re buying and bidding on an ounce of gold, pure gold by the weight,” said Alan Glover, a Carson City official who is overseeing the auction, AP reports.
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Cheryl Chumley is a continuous news writer for The Washington Times. Previously, she was part of the start-up team for The Washington Times’ digital aggregation product, Times247. She’s also a 2008-2009 Robert Novak journalism fellow with The Phillips Foundation. She can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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