AKRON - It seems like a plot out of a Hollywood movie: thieves break into a vacant storefront, carve their way through a wall and armed with a torch, get their hands on what is inside a loaded safe.
But Akron Police detectives believe that scenario is exactly what happened at Chet’s Coin Shop sometime this past weekend.
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The shop’s owner, 73-year-old, Chester Endress lost some rare coins in the heist, including a 1795 half dime and a 1925 Buffalo nickel worth an estimated $50,000.

Asterix and Obelix, had they existed, might have paid for their mead and other magic potions with gold-silver-copper coins stamped with elaborate images of men and horses.

The largest treasure trove of pre-Roman, Gaulish money ever to be found has been discovered in central Brittany.

The 545 coins – each worth thousands of euros to collectors but priceless to historians and archaeologists – could overturn much of the received wisdom about the complexity, and wealth, of pre-Roman Celtic society in France. Why was such enormous wealth, a king’s ransom at the time, buried in the grounds of a large Gaulish farm 40 miles south of Saint-Brieuc in the first century BC? Why was the hoard never recovered? (more…)

Christmas seems to have come early for the District of Columbia.

Yesterday we reported that a congressional ban on needle-exchange programs was finally lifted and that we were getting our D.C. postmark back. Today we find out that the District will join the other 50 states and get its own quarter.

Buried in a larger article in the Post on a $515.7 billion spending bill that allocates funds for the District, the announcement was made with almost no fanfare:

The legislation provides hundreds of millions of dollars for the District. It includes the annual federal payment for D.C. courts, almost $224 million, as well as almost $48 million for defender services in family courts, according to a statement from Norton. It makes available $190 million to assist former prison inmates returning home to the city. It also includes millions for schools, sewers, libraries and a new forensics lab, among other projects… The bill also will establish a quarter with an image representing the District, similar to coins commemorating the 50 states. Read Full Article

There’s no fancy way to say it: Gold investors made a killing in 2007. Year-to-date, gold’s spot price is up 25%.

For some better perspective, consider the year-to-date gains of the three major U.S. stock indices: The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (6.17%), the tech-laden NASDAQ Composite Index (7.48%), and the broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (2.59%). Gold eclipsed them all.

Gold hasn’t punched out the broad equity-indices like this since the late 1970s - a period still remembered reverently by gold bugs and institutional investors alike, when the “yellow metal” surged to record highs during an inflation-fueled economic malaise.

“The best one can say is that in the past several years gold’s been going from the bottom left of the screen to the top right,” said Dennis Gartman, editor of the daily investment newsletter, the Gartman Letter. Read Full Story