Trove of 1,720 “Napoléons” gold coins discovered in a modest stone house

After an extensive search of the modest stone house, the notary was about to give up. Then he looked behind a picture on the wall of a storage room

A notary searching a modest stone house for clues to the whereabouts of a deceased bachelor’s relatives was about to give up. Then he glanced behind a picture on the wall of a storage room, packed with fishing rods and garden tools.

Built into the wall was a chest containing a trove of coins and medallions, meticulously labelled, along with ten cloth pouches, each containing 172 “Napoléon”, as 20 franc French gold coins are known.

Among the coins, some dating back to the 14th century, were seven from the Duchy of Aquitaine with the likeness of Edward the Black Prince, who spent nine years there in the Hundred Years’ War after being appointed ruler in Bordeaux by his father, Edward III.

Also of note were “masterpieces of gothic art” and coins from the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XVI, plus coins struck just after the latter’s execution at the revolutionary guillotine in 1793.

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“I have never seen such a major collection go on sale from the point of view of quantity and quality,” said Thierry Parsy, an expert at Drouot auction house in Paris, where the coins are to be sold in separate lots on Thursday in an evening sale beginning at 6 p.m.. Narce “knew what he was buying,” Parsy added.

The coins are estimated at €2 million. The Napoléons, which Parsy said were in “exceptional condition”, are valued at about €100,000 and will be sold separately.

The deceased collector, named Narce, lived alone in the house in the village of Monbahus, in the Lot-et-Garonne département in southwestern France, close to the Dordogne boundary.

Pierre Sicaud, the mayor of the village, which has a population of 1,300, said no one had imagined that Narce and his sister, who died a few years ago, had amassed such a valuable collection.

“They were very polite, very modest people who lived in an ordinary house a stone’s throw from the mairie,” he told the Sud Ouest newspaper.

The notary, who has not been named, is continuing his search for the heirs, who are said to be distant cousins of Narce. They will inherit not only the coins but also a small sum of money that was found in a drawer.