1806 US $5 Gold Coin

Gold "weathers the storm" of the elements when buried, even for extended periods of time.

Nevertheless, 90% gold can still develop an 'old gold' tone in coins of this age.
Probably the best examples of this are in the contemporary British gold Guinea series.

Forget about the nicks. If this coin proves genuine, and you can positively link it to the site of discovery, the sky's the limit on what you could sell it for. Dug gold from the time and place of Joseph Smith is museum quality stuff. That's why I was asking you about ANYTHING you found in the ground near the coin. The burial depth is a good sign IMO. I don't know what the accepted New York treasure hunting techniques were in 1820 before metal detectors, but having an angel show you where to dig would probably be the only way to find a coin buried a foot in the ground.

I visited a coin shop in downtown Salt Lake City three years ago. Their foreign selection was very good, and I bought some 19th century French silver there. One of the employees told me about getting to see and handle some of the church's territorial gold pieces. While your's won't go for these prices, this will give you an idea of how much demand there is for association pieces:

https://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=29609146

thq - just read about the Mormon coins, I'll be now looking for them- were they gold ? Didn't watch the videos

Man, what a topic. Everyone on this like chickens in a barnyard.

mums the word on location of my find. I will be however going back with my big coil to some places I know the Mormons lived, camped, worked and more. And I'm still waiting on a Bigger coil for the place that I've found the 1806 at a whopping 13 inches deep. Thanks again thq . Being new on here I can not message you, not sure if you're on FB- but I'm easy to find on the MD pages .

westernsky any of those territorial coins that went east would probably have gone about as far as St. Louis, and no way ANY of them would have made it to western New York. This was 30-40 years too late.

I believe this is the Salt Lake shop I visited. You should talk to them but you might wait for the slab to come back. I'd be saving every scrap of evidence you have about the dig site.

http://www.rustcoin.com/Kirtland-Notes/

I've picked out the page that shows their stock of Kirtland notes, which was the next stop as the Mormons headed west out of New York. These things are famous. Smith had them printed up by the "Kirtland Anti Banking Society" (they weren't chartered as a bank and I don't recall whether they had any assets), and the Mormons passed them off to whoever would take them, till their value dropped to ten cents on the dollar or less. For this Smith was tarred and feathered by the angry locals and run out of town. He had a vision at that point that they should move on, to Independence, Missouri.

You start to get the idea why they liked golld so much as they moved from NY to MO to IL to UT. They never had any, and were always trying to pass paper. But that paper is highly collected now. Kirtland starts trading in the $2000 range. And those gold territorial coins I've only seen them in pictures. I'll hunt around Heritage and find one.

http://coins.ha.com/itm/territorial...ption-071515

This guy is willing to sell his half eagle. Minimum offer $26,790. Yours has way more class.

I bought many a coin from Al Rust and his children when living in Utah back in the 1980's. A heck of a nice guy and the preeminent authority on LDS currency issues from Navoo to Salt Lake. He wrote the book on it.

Joe Smith would be turning over in his grave if he knew what this Mormon money was bringing. He'd still be churning it out like there was no tomorrow if he was still around. He'd probably even recruit Mark Hoffman to help him make it!

As far as the 1806 5$ coin that is the topic of this thread, it's provenence cannot be traced to anything other than it was allegedly found "on a Colonial site" miles away from where Joseph Smith lived. No need to save the dirt.