08-05-2025
Rare coins hidden from Hitler could fetch £75m at auction
One of the world's greatest coin collections lay buried in cigar boxes for 50 years after its owner took fright at a pending Nazi invasion and died shortly after Hitler's troops arrived.
The hoard, dubbed the 'Traveller collection', was retrieved only when the collector's much younger wife began to fear her own death and that 'the hiding place might be lost for ever'.
Her son-in-law and another relative retrieved the treasures, which had been put in envelopes within cigar boxes and metal boxes, placed them in a bank vault and began the inventory and valuation process.
The collection, spanning centuries and continents, has been valued at £75 million and described as the 'most important collection of world coins ever to be offered at public auction'.
