Lust for gold never ends

The supposed treasure find of $130 billion in gold on a sunken Russian warship is already being called a scam by major news outlets.

The Daily Mail and Reuters have each published online articles on the topic.

What is interesting to me is the angle that the find story is also connected to a cryptocurrency scheme.

In recent months, we have seen investors almost literally throwing money at cryptocurrency enterprises.

Prospectuses by new firms have literally claimed that they will only decide what to do with the funds raised after they have received them.

If it is that easy to lay claim to large sums of money with a cryptocurrency story, why would you bother to connect it to a story about a Russian gold treasure?

Coin collectors can probably now dismiss the idea that they will ever have access to historic coins and bars from the Donskoi.

This Russian warship was sunk by the Japanese in 1905 during the war between the two countries.

It is too bad there is no treasure.

Even as skeptical as I am, I am at heart a bit of a kid when it comes to numismatic adventure stories.

Who wouldn’t want these claims to be true?

Such an outcome is so much more exciting than ordinary day-to-day life.

There is an element of wanting to believe in Santa Claus in this.

Charlie Brown always tries to kick the football even as he knows Lucy will take it away.

Collectors flock to new Mint issues in hopes of making a killing.

Remember the long lines and extra police required when the U.S. Mint offered 500 proof gold Kennedy half dollars at the American Numismatic Association convention in 2014?

I interviewed the lucky four individuals who were first in line that day and wrote a front-page story about it for Numismatic News.

Those first four coins were sold to David Hendrickson of SilverTowne for $20,000.

This was not a bad return for buying four coins at $1,240 each after spending all night waiting in line.

Even gold Kennedy buyers further back in line were able to triple their money.

This is the stuff of dreams.

This is why the U.S. Mint has so many online sellouts.

You can buy a slabbed Proof-70 Ultra Cameo gold Kennedy from that ANA convention for $1,395 on the APMEX website.

You have a choice of grading services.

That price really is an incredible deal.

It is not much of a markup from issue price.

But what is missing from these coins now is the hope to strike it rich that animated massive interest in it in the first place.

But we know that just as there will be other sunken treasure stories, there will be more new Mint issues.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog for the third time in 2017 . He is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."