4 ms·

I'm not sure in 1849 there were a lot of banks that one would trust that kind of funds with in gold rush areas in CA. I'd imagine banks were much less robust t

• jonnathanson 13y ago
  There was no FDIC in 1849, so fair enough point. No deposits were insured. :) But people generally didn't realize how problematic that was except in financial panics and runs on banks. To wit, there was a big panic in 1873, not long after these coins were ostensibly buried. But that was well after these coins were minted, which makes their near-mint, quasi-uncirculated condition a bit hard to reconcile. I suppose it's possible the burier had them in tin cans (or some other receptacle) for decades, and buried them in the 1870s. At any rate, banks were around and thriving during the Gold Rush, and San Francisco was in many ways the most progressive financial hub in the US, rivaling NYC. To whatever extent someone had $27,000 in those days, he probably would have banked it. Unless he'd come into it very recently, or under suspicious circumstances, or had just withdrawn it prior to burying it. It's certainly possible this person was a bank robber, though the more likely explanation is an unbanked or bank-panicked individual.