A huge collection of historic gold coins, recovered from the wall of a house in France after their owner passed away, has been sold for millions of euros at auction.
The coins were collected by Paul Narce, who lived in a small village in south-west France until his death in 2024, according to Beaussant Lefèvre and Associates.
“Narce, who lived a modest life and didn’t see a lot of the world, spent all of his money on his collection,” said coin expert Thierry Parsy in a statement previewing the sale.
Over the years, he built up a collection of gold coins “exceptional both in number, with more than 1,000 pieces, as well as the rarities it contains,” said Parsy.
Many of the coins date back centuries, according to Parsy.
Among them are ancient coins from the Kingdom of Macedonia, dating to 336-323 BC, as well as almost complete series of coins used during the reigns of French Kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Narce had no direct descendants and only a few people knew of his hobby.
However, no one knew where he kept his collection, which “could have remained undiscovered forever,” said Parsy, were it not for a notary who set out to find the coins in the house, which had been empty since Narce moved into a care home a year before he died.
The notary eventually found the coins in a small space in the wall, hidden behind a painting in a store room.
In addition to the carefully labelled collection, the notary also found 10 packages, each containing 172 gold 20 franc coins, equivalent to an ingot of gold.
The final sale far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of 2 million euros ($2.43 million).