A brand new gold rush is coming to California. For the third yr, San Francisco’s Witter Coin will host a treasure hunt throughout town collectively price over $50,000. The grand prize? An extremely rare, $50 gold piece from 1851 valued at round $25,000.
“This city was built around the pursuit of gold,”Witter Gold CEO and proprietor Seth Chandler instructed KTVU. “We wanted to create something that brings that spirit back. Something real, tangible, and rooted in San Francisco’s history.”
Humans have lived within the area now generally known as San Francisco for over 5,000 years. European colonization of the world started when the Spanish through the late-18th century, who finally ceded the territory to Mexico in 1821. Following the Mexican-American War, the United States annexed all of present-day California and Nevada, in addition to parts of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Although tens of millions of individuals dwell in San Francisco right now, lower than 470 residents known as it dwelling on the eve of the California gold rush in 1847. By 1849, that quantity had exploded to over 25,000 newly settled treasure seekers.
The grand prize supplied by Witter Coin is a rare instance of what’s generally known as an 1851 Humbert “Slug.” The octagonal piece is technically not U.S. forex, however an ingot minted by the official United States Assay Office of Gold and its assayer Augustus Humbert. Emblazoned with a bald eagle standing on prime of a boulder, the $50 slug contained 2.5 ounces of gold, making it one of many largest currencies of its form.
In an Instagram submit, Chandler defined that the shop will launch hourly clues on Saturday April 25 to assist scavenger hunters pinpoint the placement of the 1851 Humbert Slug in addition to 9 different historic collectible forex items. Each treasure will be hidden in “iconic San Francisco neighborhoods” with no “digging or trespassing” required to entry them.