Weird News

[Gravdigr]

Arrogant is worse.

[Carruthers]

Swastikas carved into a county council building have been branded "potentially offensive and upsetting" by someone demanding to know why they are there.

The carvings on Chelmsford's County Hall, built between 1928 and 1939, were made shortly before World War Two.

But a member of the public has lodged a Freedom of Information request asking why it "was still commissioned given the symbol's negative connotations".

Swastika building question put to Essex County Council

I was last in the US in 2004 and stopped off in Thermopolis, Wyoming, where this building caught my eye.

Of course, the Swastika was around long before Uncle Adolf and his band of scamps, but the design does tend to draw attention to itself, doesn't it?

[glatt]

Ruining a fairly cool design is pretty low on the list of crimes against humanity that the Nazis are guilty of committing, but it still annoys me. I like the visual look of a swastika. It's much like a greek key, which is also pretty cool looking.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Thanks, I wasn't aware that design had a name. Well, I figured people that used it called it something or other, but something more technical than Greek Key.

[Gravdigr]

Pinwheel. I have a really old quilt top with a pinwheel design. It's a dead ringer for a swastika.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That sounds interesting, quilts are such a regional thing, in materials, designs, stiches and names.
I'm only familiar with this type being called windmill.

[Sundae]

my only excuse is that even though I know you drive on the other side of the road, I automatically still expect to see signs on the left. My bad.

I get it now, and thanks for the additional information.

[glatt]

Buckets of gold coins found in California back yard.


If you found $10 million in gold, would you go to the papers? I bet the finders wind up not getting to keep anything.

[BigV]

Buried on the property they've owned for years? I'd be surprised if they were prevented from keeping it, or keeping the proceeds.

[glatt]

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.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

I bet the finders wind up not getting to keep anything.

Originally Posted by BigV

Buried on the property they've owned for years? I'd be surprised if they were prevented from keeping it, or keeping the proceeds.

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

[glatt]

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

[footfootfoot]

The moral of the story?
Shut your mouth

[glatt]

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?

[footfootfoot]

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