Photo Gallery Archive Bonanza
On Dec. 7 the state library in the southern German city of Passau announced that one of its workers had made a surprise discovery of valuable coins in the archive.
Janitor Tanja Höls, shown here, had often passed by an unassuming wooden box stowed away in an archive in Passau's historic state library, but it wasn't until about two weeks ago that she was decided take a look inside. What she found were dozens of coins, most of them silver. "I had no idea that I'd found a treasure," the 43-year-old said.
The library believes that the collection of 172 well-preserved coins likely belonged to Passau's prince-bishops and could be worth a "low six-figure sum."
"This find is a real bonanza," library head Markus Wennerhold said, adding that it happened to coincide with preparations for the library's 400th anniversary.
Wennerhold suspects that they were hidden in the library around 1803 during Germany's secularization, when such church assets were transferred to the state. They may have wanted to keep them out of the hands of tax officials.
