Hundreds of gold coins minted before the French Revolution have been discovered in an old château in western France, auction house Ivoire Angers said Thursday (2), which will put them up for auction on September 29.
A married couple, who bought the mansion in 2012, decided to renovate the estate’s three buildings and their workers found the treasure inside a metal box hung on the wall, according to the auction house.
The owners said that part of the money obtained will go to the workers who found the treasure. The house is estimated to raise between 250,000 and 300,000 euros (more than 1.5 million R$ and 1.8 million R$, respectively).
“The box was inside the wall, crammed between the stones,” Francois Millon, 63, the owner of the palace, told AFP. Days later, he added, they “found at the top of a keel what should have been a sack with a second batch of pieces in it.”
239 coins stamped during the reigns of Louis 13 (1610-1643) and Louis 16 (1645-1715) were discovered in 2019 in BlueFit, a small town in the region of Brittany.
Coins that have been found include the Gold Louis and the Double Gold Louis, some of which are uncommon. One of them, made in 1646, has an estimated value of 15,000 euros (just over 91,000 Brazilian reals).