Sorry, I should have also linked to this story I also saw.

It speculates that the coins are the same gold coins that were stolen from the US Mint in 1900 in San Freancisco. $30,000 of coins were stolen, and these coins have a face value of $28,000 and are in the same area, and the mint dates of the coins are a few years prior to the theft.

If those are the stolen coins, they might get a reward, but, my guess is they're boned.

If they get to keep them, then they are going to owe about 47% of their value in federal and state taxes. And they have 46 days to come up with the roughly $5 million.

Linky

The moral of the story?
Shut your mouth

Well, they found the coins last year, and are only opening their mouths now.

I imagine they shut their mouths and tried to map all the scenarios out. They considered just selling a few coins a year to stay under the radar, but at that rate they would die long before they had enough money to make a difference. So then they figured they should unload it all at once. It's worth more in antique coin form than it would be melted down, so it would be better to keep them as coins. How can you unload thousands of antique coins on the coin market without drawing attention to yourself? You can't. They had to figure out how to do that, and the only way is to do it legitimately. So they researched the law and figured they had a legal claim to ownership of the gold. (Maybe they didn't know about the 1900 US Mint theft. It wasn't well publicized.) They looked in to taxes and realized half of proceeds would go to the government, and they had to pay taxes on it the same year they found it. That means since they found it last year, it's all due April 15th of this year. So now they are going public to publicize the coins and drive up interest in the auctions that are sure to come. Not much time left. They had to act now.

Or maybe they found the coins ten years ago, and have been slowly unloading them a bit each year, and are now impatient and willing to just pay the taxes to get the lump sum payout.

It's like money laundering, except even harder because these coins are rare.

Can you imagine trying to sell off a famous stolen painting?

The antique coin value has to be well over twice the scrap value for that plan to make monetary sense considering taxes and auction commission.
I would think it would be hard to prove those were the stolen coins since they don't have serial numbers like bills.
I'd keep one of the nicest and put it in a shadow box then scrap the rest, sentimental fool that I am

Ahh! Yet again, reading the actual article in question proves to be immeasurably illuminating.

I think they should only be taxed if they sell them.

From Glatt's last link If their are taxed, then the government is stating they have "undisputed possession". I read that as the government is not claiming the coins were stolen from the mint and must be returned.

Someone told me the finders are giving very large sums to charity.

You can be sure than any individual with just a casual interest will disburse that money to better ends than our beloved FedGov.

Butcher window display: Public to decide on dead animals
 

This is how it started...


Butcher window display: Public to decide on dead animals


...and this is how it ended.

Sudbury butcher's dead animal window display to return

Yay!
Thanks for the find, Carr.

Yeah, we discussed this face to face while losers were snoozin' and not on GMT.

Pleased to be of service! :thumb:

I guess the government realized that it would stand to earn more in taxes than the gold's value. I'm sure there is not an ebay user with the handle, fedgov.

Under the "Finders Keepers- Losers Weepers" law...

Why, the tax is on "market value at the time of the find", so they could tax for a portion, or grab it all and sell for market value.
Methinks that would drag out for years in court, though, and the government certainly wouldn't do anything that wasn't in the best interest of the citizen taxpayer.

Citizen? Do we still have that?

Sure, that's what you call the people that agree with you. You know what to call the ones who don't. ;)

Having posted about the butcher's shop in Suffolk (#2470) which was the subject of complaints about dead creatures in its window, it jogged my memory about similar complaints made in a fishing port in Devon.

Read on...

Daily Telegraph

Since everyone found out he's an ass, he's just reinforcing his position as king ass. :rolleyes:

We have a lot of "Right to farm life" signs posted around these here parts.

Basically means "If you move to farm country from the city don't be surprised at the things you find on and around farms."

On carcasses in butchers' windows: I can understand why some parents feel that way. It's not like they've marched into an abattoir and complained about blood, or a farm and complained about animal shit.

Lots of kids take that stuff in their stride, but not all. The idea that kids shouldn't be shielded from the realities of life and death, or from the realities of what they consume and where it comes from is all well and good until you have a five year old waking up with nightmares and terrified of walking down the high street, because that's where the butcher's shop window is, with its glassy eyed pigs head and glistening rabbit corpses.

But surely that's an argument for more butchers' shop windows, not less.
I grew up with them, and despite becoming extremely squeamish at about the age of ten (no idea what happened, but all of a sudden blood made me nauseous) they were just part of life.

Even when I felt ill when I saw Give Blood car stickers, I could still walk past a sawdust strewn butchers' shop, because that was where meat came from.
I'd never condone forcing a sensitive child into dissection of an animal or animal part, but I equally would not condone stopping a purveyor of dead animals from displaying their wares.

Oh horseshit, the 5 year old won't have nightmares (about the butcher shop, anyway) if the parents are doing their job.
Sorry folks, Wally World is closed today, you'll have to keep your kid in a reality proof box until we open again.

The internet is rife with people that don't know they and their pets are made of meat, there are actually days you shouldn't go out in the woods, and there is a relationship between everything and it's food.

These people spawn and vote. :smack:

I am indebted to this morning's edition of The Times...

In a similar vein...

A while back, I was stuck in a traffic jam, seemingly for all eternity, when I noticed a local undertaker's premises next door to a betting shop. I briefly considered visiting both establishments to see who would offer the better odds.

I know exactly where that is...

Bill Bryson wrote that he went past a shop which advertised "We buy absolutely anything!"
So he went on and gobbed on the counter and asked "How much for that?"
Of course he didn't really.

They were closed.

And for those who don't.... :thumb::thumb::thumb:

Have some dead birds. I guess all the old timers in Wycombe are traumatized. :rolleyes:

Seems like it would be more sanitary to keep them alive in a pen in back and slaughter them at time of sale. Those ones up high look like they may have turned.

They're ripening. ;)

Yeah. Just a little longer, and you can stand under them and catch bits in your mouth as they fall off.

That's a lot of damn birds. They had to expect to sell those by the end of the day, if they were put out like that, surely? Maybe it was Thanksgiving or Christmas and they knew every person in town would be coming to get one?

Wouldn't there be a kid on a giant step ladder ready to retrieve birds if they were selling that many in a day?

Surely you've read Two Bad Mice? (Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca)
"It's as hard as the hams at the
cheesemonger's," said Hunca Munca.

The ham broke off the plate with a
jerk, and rolled under the table.

"Let it alone," said Tom Thumb;
"give me some fish, Hunca Munca!"

Hunca Munca tried every tin spoon
in turn; the fish was glued to the dish.

Then Tom Thumb lost his temper.
He put the ham in the middle of the
floor, and hit it with the tongs and
with the shovel--bang, bang, smash,
smash!

The ham flew all into pieces, for
underneath the shiny paint it was
made of nothing but plaster!

Then there was no end to the rage
and disappointment of Tom Thumb
and Hunca Munca. They broke up the
pudding, the lobsters, the pears and
the oranges.

Obviously those upper birds are plaster and not pining for the fjords

I just sauntered off to do a Google search on plaster birds hanging in butcher shops, and found this.

weird news indeed.

Attachment 46932

Maybe. I can't tell from the photo, but you hang game. If they're game birds and it's Winter then they need to be hung anyway, may as well make a display of it.

I've saved, and magnified, the photo and the top seven rows on the gable end appear to be rabbits, with game birds and poultry below.
The wall on the left hand side appears to be mostly covered in pheasants with some poultry.

I can only speculate but here goes. I wonder if this is a Christmas display? As it would be the first Christmas of WW2 it was probably an effort to show that everything was running as normal.
There is still a shooting estate just outside High Wycombe and no doubt there were more in those days so supplies were unlikely to have been a problem at that stage of the war.

Just my two penn'orth.

ETA: OK, I've just found some more info. The letters 'POU' are just visible on the right hand side of the picture.
Using some inspired searching around the word 'Poulterer' I came up with a bit more info including another photo.
I'm not going to post the photo here as it is available from a commercial photo library and is watermarked. However, the information reads:

The building is considerably larger than it appears in Bruce's post above and there doesn't seem to be a square inch of wall visible anywhere.

See for yourselves here: Getty Images.

Nice find.

Ah, now I understand. Those birds might as well be in a freezer. There are cold places in the world!

I just read an article about a college girl who noticed (not the first one to notice, I'm sure...but...) a musical score on the butt of a character from the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.

She was studying the triptych and noticed there was music score written on someone's ass. Certainly she didn't discover that. Keep in mind, this painting was made (copy and paste Wiki):

Here's a high res link of the original work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Th...Resolution.jpg

And here's the video of the young lady, named Amelia, talking about how she decided to transcribe the music. How curious and smart is she? It's a Cooper "ridiculist' but it totally honors her.



It's just really cute. :)

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvi...diculist__CNN/

Thanks, Amelia. I'd seen the triptych in books but had never studied it so much.

That's pretty cool!

I found the original here.

Some children had their own butcher shops.

Thanks for the link Bruce, that's grand.:thumb:

I've also done some more digging and find that the business was called 'Aldridge's' and appears to have been well known for its Christmas display. I suspect that the firm no longer trades as they don't appear in the phone book. Whether the premises remain is unclear as White Hart Street is now a pedestrian zone so Street View doesn't help.

Anyway, here's the pictures, the first being from the twenties and the second being dated as 1931.

fascinating

Those children's butchers shops look German.
I cant quite decide why, except that it's unconscious influence, knowing that the Germans were great toy-makers and loved their meat.

The one in the lower left is German, the other three are Brit Victorian.


And from Canton, New York...

Ha! Our shops have more meat in them.
Look it the sparse German shop.

We win the butchers!

That's a hell of a blanket statement about what would or wouldn't freak a kid out.

I was brought up with a very unsentimental view of animals (pets notwithstanding). Both my brother and father occasionally engaged in poaching. And it was not entirely unknown for dad to return from his job in the early hours of the morning with roadkill.

We went to a poachers' convention when i was around 7 or 8. Martin took part in a rabbit skinning contest (came 3rd) and gave me the foot of his rabbit to keep for luck. After he'd shot some wood pigeons for a pie, he attached string to one of the bird claws for me. It was awesome, you pull the cord and the bird foot moved and clenched. We kept lizards and snakes, who ate live food. I watched as mice disappeared down the gullet of a python.

But: in the market there was a butcher's stall that always had a pig's head prominently displayed. It gave me the heebie jeebies. I had nightmares about that head. And from an early age refused to go past that stall. Likewise, no matter how many dead animals I encountered (rabbits and game birds hung to dry in the back room) I was totally freaked out by fish - and still can't eat fish if it arrives with the head still attached.

It's the glassy eyes - or worse the empty sockets *shudders*

Wait, your Dad was Will Scarlet?

So your folks allowed you to dictate their path through the market? :eyebrow:

A friend of mine grew up in communist Poland and he told me the following Polish joke:
What's the cleanest shop in Warsaw?
The butcher shop.
(There was never any meat and no food usually,for that matter, in any of the shops.

Ahh communist Poland. Good times good times.

I don't think mum saw any value in insisting I go past something that was freaking me out.

We didn't go to the market that often. I daresay had it been a weekly occurence she mayhave taken a different tack.


[eta] and if the next thing you have to say is in any way insinuating that my parents didn't 'do their job properly', you and I are going to fall out.

Pre-'Lord of the Flies', or, post-'Lord of the Flies'?

I eat nothing that's looking at me.

Well, almost nothing.:eaty:

:D

Hahah. Pre-Lord of the Flies. But damn, if I didn't have a vivid image in my head when I did read LotF !

I completely get what you're saying now Dani.
You were raised in a way that completely embraced the idea of animals as food and eating meat to live, but a particular image distressed you to the point of nightmare.
I don't think this is the case of the people complaining in the article. For example your Mum found it more reasonable to avoid what was causing your upset; she didn't wage a campaign against the proprietor of said stall.

But I'm glad you explained it.
Who knows what goes on in the minds of children? I was terrified of a goldfish called Glug on a children's television programme and actually had nightmares about it. It was not even vaguely threatening, but it filled me with a visceral horror. At least your childhood shudder came from a real decapitated animal ;)

Fallout? Fallout! Why I oughta... No, your parents are great, it's you who's nuts. http://cellar.org/2012/bwekk.gif

Your parents did the right thing, they realized they had a crazy kid and dealt with it. They didn't demand the world change, merchants change their business practices, to accommodate their kid/family preferences.

That's what I keep seeing today... the world must change for my convenience/comfort.
Hey world, accommodate my preferences/whims... I'll remember you at Christmas.

In our neighborhood as a lad, there were no fences, and everyone's backyard was fair game for playing and running around. There were pockets of woods here and there too. We'd run from yard to yard all the time and knew all the good hiding spots.

So on more than one occasion, we'd be playing hide and seek or kick the can or chase, and I'd run into somebody's backyard and there would be a deer carcass hanging from a tree, with its throat slit and tongue hanging out just a little bit. I remember being horrified, but then it would change to fascination, and I'd have to stop to check out the carcass.

Ha! Can't rightly argue with that :P

You do know what to do in case of fallout, don't you?

You put it back in and take shorter strokes.

:jig:


Thanks, I'm here all week. Try the pighead.

When you run out of cash
 

That's when they will miss you! ;)

LINK

For at least five years, the woman’s body lay clothed in a winter jacket in the backseat of her Jeep in the garage of a home where she lived alone.

Her bills were automatically deducted from her bank account, and residents of the quiet middle-class Pontiac, Mich. neighborhood said they noticed nothing amiss.

Nobody saw her, but the grass was cut and the mail didn’t pile up. Some neighbors said they thought she had moved out of the country after the recession hit several years ago.
Eventually, the money in her bank account ran out and the house went into foreclosure, leading to the gruesome discovery this week.

The body had mummified, Oakland County officials said, adding to the mystery.

A contractor the bank sent to check out the house discovered the body Wednesday in the attached garage of the ranch-style home, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department.

Undersheriff Mike McCabe said investigators believe the woman has been dead since at least 2008. That’s the year the license plate on the Jeep expired.

“She had $54,000 in her account, and her bills were being deducted,” McCabe said. “Eventually, the money ran out, and her house went into foreclosure.”

The undersheriff said neighbors told deputies they thought the woman had moved out of the country because they had not seen her for three or more years.

An autopsy showed there was no trauma to the body; a cause of death is pending, McCabe said.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the Oakland County deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, said the skin was intact, though internal organs had decomposed. He said he found no evidence of internal or external injuries.

Pacris said that in the mummification process, skin will develop a parchment-like consistency and leathery texture. Climate, weather and humidity play a role, he said.

He said finding a body in that condition is unusual, but “once in a while, we see this.”

Pacris said the body was on the backseat and clothed in a heavy jacket and jeans, leading him to believe the woman may have died when the weather was cold. The key was in the ignition, but in the off position, Pacris said.

He said the immediate concern is confirming the woman’s identity and learning more about her, including her medical history and social habits, to determine the cause of death.

McCabe said some relatives on the East Coast may have been identified, but he withheld the woman’s name until they could be notified.

Neighbor Darryl Tillery, 49, said the woman’s mail never piled up at the house and her lawn was kept neat.

“It was pretty manicured,” he said Thursday from his home. “There was no indication there was a body in there, at all.”

Tilly said he and his neighbors are shaken.

Renea Garrett, 46, said she felt bad about the death and the body not being discovered for so long.

“People need to be closer to each other and check on your neighbors,” she said.

Another neighbor said he assumed that the woman had left after the economy want bad in 2009. At the time, many people were leaving their homes because they could no longer afford them.

McCabe said neighbors had complained about a hole in the home’s roof and said raccoons were getting in. The company managing the house for the mortgage holder sent a repair man.

“He went into the garage and saw the mummified remains in the backseat and called 911,” McCabe said.

McCabe said the electricity was still on in the house but moisture had caused black mold throughout. Detectives planned to wear protective suits to inspect the rest of the home, he said.

Staff writer L.L. Brasier contributed to this report.

--

(c)2014 the Detroit Free Press

Truly weird. I wonder if she stopped her mail. It could have been an exposure suicide.

If she had a mail slot high on the door I suppose the junk mail could be accommodated. But sitting in the back seat fully clothed, key in the ignition but turned off, is really odd.