Chip Polston previews KET's show on "The Great Kentucky Hoard"

Chip Polston previews the next edition of KET's "Kentucky Life" where he speaks to the Kentucky farmer who discovered "The Great Kentucky Hoard" of Civil War-era coins on his land...

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Sipping by the roadside on a summer'sday. What's that chatting with my messmates?
Has some time away, laying inthe shadows underneath the tree, little
Civil War music, corncious eating gooberpees? These bees bees bees eating goober
pees? Goodness, how delicious eatinggoober pees? Are they really delicious?

(00:26):
I don't know if that's right.Jim Paulston joins us from k E t
Hey brother, welcome, It's goodhave you on, Jerry. Great to
talk to you again. Man,it's been a minute. Have you ever
heard that song before? I don'tthink i've heard the song. I've heard
the guy who sings it, theFrosty the Snowman, Guys for Lives.
That's the same guy, yeah,singing the song from from the Civil War.

(00:49):
Because on Kentucky Life this Saturday nightat eight pm Eastern, seventh Central,
please tell people about the topic ofthis particular episode. So this entire
show, Terry is going to beabout something that was in the media quite
a bit last July called the GreatKentucky Horde. And what happened was a
farmer somewhere in Kentucky, no oneknows exactly where except for him, was

(01:12):
out walking in his field one afternoon, see something kind of shining in the
sun, bends down to pick itup. He finds a gold coin from
the Civil War, starts to digger. At this point he takes his cell
phone out and he starts to film, and we actually have the video of
this all right. Takes his cellphone out, starts filming, and gold
coins are spilling out of the groundto the tune where he came across seven

(01:34):
hundred Civil War era gold coins thatended up selling for a little under four
million dollars, And it was agreat story that really captured a lot of
national attention last July, and forthe first time ever this week on our
show, you're going to hear insightsfrom the farmer himself. We got him
to talk to us to tell usabout making the discovery and how all that

(01:56):
came together. Because he's a littlehe was a little reluctant to speak publicly
correct very reluctant. And you canunderstand why because not only you know it
was he suddenly wealthy that he hadcome across almost four million dollars, he
also didn't want it to be asituation where, you know, he would
do an on camera interview with uson Saturday, and then Sunday morning,
open up his blinds and there's seventyguys with metal detectors and shovels in his

(02:20):
front yard. You can understand wherehe would be a little reticent with that.
We went back and forth. Ittook several months to kind of get
him comfortable with it, but hefinally agreed to respond to written questions and
he sent me three pages, singlespace of responses to questions that I had
asked him and were able to sharewhat he told us about making the discovery
and what else he thinks might beout there this Saturday night. Oh,

(02:45):
that's pretty fascinating. So there couldbe more. But where are not going
to divulge the location so that theseven hundred people with metal detectors don't show
up? Right? So there's aschool of thought behind this terry that there
was a group called Morgan's Raiders backduring the Civil War cut a swath of
destruction through Ohio, Indiana, andKentucky. Were really they just pillaged and

(03:05):
stole and rob banks. Jesse Jameswas an early one of theirs. And
there is a school of thought thatthese made the discovery, may be tied
back to them in that this wasa very wealthy landowner who heard that they
were coming through and maybe buried them, or it could have been something that
Morgan's raiders themselves buried because they werestealing so much stuff as they were going

(03:25):
they literally couldn't carry it all,so they were burying things as they went
to go back to get them.There's been people looking for what they call
Morgan's stashes for decades around Kentucky,and there's a school of thought that that
might be where these came from.I'm guessing without GPS technology there they're mapping
was kind of approximate, very Itwas like go to the third fence post

(03:47):
by the old oak tree sort ofthing. Is about as good as you
could get, right. Yeah,that's so interesting. And were the coins
loose or were they in like somesort of container. That's an interesting question.
They were loose as he was diggingthem out of the ground, they
were loose. The farmer kept acouple of the coins, not many of
them, but of the ones thathe kept, there was one single coin

(04:12):
in the entire horde that had theimprint of a burlap bag still on it,
so it looked like they had beenin a bag. They had been
put in the ground covered with dirt. We talked to a coin dealer in
Lexington who ended up brokering the salefor this guy. Just so happens here
in Kentucky. The guy who literallywrote the Encyclopedia of Civil War gold coins
is a coin dealer in Lexington.He's been on the popular TV show Pawn

(04:35):
Stars about a half a dozen times. He even sits on the border directors
at the Smithsonian Institute of American History, and Jeff told us as we were
talking to him about this, youcould put gold in the ground and come
back two thousand years later and it'lllook exactly like it did the day it
went in the ground. It's imperviousto everything. So that's why the gold
ended up being able to withstand,you know, one hundred and sixty years

(04:58):
in the ground. And when yousee the video of the arm are actually
digging them out of the dirt,and you consider how long they've been there,
they look like they're in pretty goodshape. That's astounding. And think
of the poor families of worms,you know, they're they're they're coming along.
They've discovered this burr lap treat codkids, we got more burr lap,
and then eventually they ate at all, and then it's like, who

(05:18):
cares about these shiny things? Thatburr lap was tasty, that was the
good stuff. And talking with thecoin dealer also a really fascinating part of
this was he and the farmer tookthe coins to Florida to a numismatic place
that was going to preserve them andgrade them and get them ready for auction.
So the two of them took themto Florida, and I asked Jeff

(05:38):
Garrett, the coin dealer, Isaid, so you two got on an
airplane carrying almost four million dollars ingold coins and he said, yeah,
yeah, we did. I said, what do you talk about when you're
on an airplane with somebody and you'vegot almost four million dollars in gold coins,
thinking he was going to have somegreat story, and he got really
serious and he said, we don'ttalk. He said, we book our
tickets separately, we don't sit together. We never acknowled each other on the

(06:00):
airplane. There's a tremendous amount ofsecurity that went into the operation to get
those coins down to Florida, toget them ready to go to auction and
preserved it. It's fascinating to learnhow all of this works, and you'll
be able to learn about that onour story Saturday Night. Yeah, because
obviously people think metal detector you gothrough this, that whatever, So they
obviously made special accommodations to get thosethings transported. And speaking of speaking of

(06:23):
metal detectors, there's been a schoolof thought whether or not metal detecting actually
played a role in this. Itdoesn't appear that it did. I had
a metal detector dealer in Shepherdsville tellme his phone rang off the hook for
weeks after this story broke from peoplewanting metal detectors to go out and start
looking, and we actually went outas part of our story with these three
guys. They called themselves the DirtNerds of Kentucky and they go out and

(06:46):
look for bury treasure on weekends basically, and it was fascinating when we were
out with them. They actually founda Civil War era cuff link in this
farm field near a house down incentral Kentucky. It was really neat to
be with them when they turned thatup. But some of the things that
they did from a treasure hunting standpoint, that the house was still there,
the original home, and they saidwhen they started looking, the first thing

(07:09):
they do is they ask where themain bedroom was, and they go there
and they look out the windows becausewhat they have found is that people would
bury things, you know, treasuresthat would be somewhere that if they hurt,
a bump in the night or somethinggoing on, they could get out
of bed, look out the windowand see if everything was okay. So
that's where they start and then theyfan out from there. But they're convinced

(07:30):
that there's more gold out there,and these guys keep looking for it.
Human beings, we're so predictable,you know, I gotta be able to
eyeball my treasure if it's the lastsomebody's there to do it. Okay.
So this runs on k ET andthen it's available online after that. Saturday
night's to run. Yep, you'llbe able to watch it live on k
ET Saturday night at eight pm.After that it will be on a YouTube

(07:53):
channel or you can find it onthe k ET website. And after you
watch the show, we encourage youto join us on Facebook. We've got
a special thing going on there.We want to hear from people about what
their theory is on how these coinsended up in the ground. After you
hear the entire story, join uson Facebook. Let us know how you
think those coins got into the ground. We'd love to hear from That's pretty
cool. I love that k ET. That's Saturday night, eight o'clock Eastern

(08:16):
time, and that's Kentucky Life.Is the name of that show, Chiff,
that is it. And then Kelseydoes Louisville Life, right, she
does Inside Louisville Inside show, andhers is about the PGA. So this
week I saw her promoting that's right, that's right. We really appreciate your
support on both those shows. Jerrythe No Worries, Chip Polston, great
talking to you again, brother,see you give you as well man four

(08:37):
million dollars nearly four million dollars inCivil War coins found in Kentucky. You
can see more, hear more,and learn more from the farmer who found
them Saturday night on k ET.Back in a minute on news radio.
Wait forty w h A s isthe soldiers have a roo