Couple discover rare coins worth $25,000 in new home

A couple in South Carolina discovered two cases full of rare coins worth around $25,000 in their new home after they moved in and returned them to their owner

James and Clarrisa Manford said the cache included 46 gold Liberty $5 coins and 18 Morgan silver dollars from the 1800s stashed in a built-in closest drawer.

“They looked real old, like they were really worth a lot of money,” James Munford. He said he took some photos of the coins and texted the pictures to the house’s former owner to see if he recognized them.

“I was just thinking, you know, they’re not mine. They’re probably a family heirloom, so I’m gonna go ahead and make sure he gets them back,” Munford said.

The couple said keeping the coins never crossed their minds, even though they would have been within their legal rights to claim ownership of them.

“We really didn’t know anything about the value of the coins. We really didn’t care, to be honest with you, we knew they were his,” Clarrisa Munford said.

The home’s former owner, a coin collector, said most of his collection is kept in a safe, but he had forgotten about the cases stashed in the drawer when he was moving out of the house. He estimated the worth of the left-behind coins at about $25,000.

“He just thanked me because he said there’s not too many honest people out there,” James Munford said.