You know those brown cloth bags the wealthy and the royal would carry their gold in, and, when feeling generous or in debt would slip to a lucky or deserving peasant? Well, a couple from northern California didn't find the brown cloth, but they did find the gold buried in their backyard, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (click for photo).

Last year, the Californians were walking their dog along their property when they spotted the tops of what looked to be old canisters emerging from the dirt. Eventually, they dug them out with a stick and found the gold inside.

It took only a quick brush of the hand to remove most of the dirt (leaked through the canisters' holes) and reveal near pristine-looking gold coins with written values of $5 to $20 and dates from the mid to late 19th century. Three canisters filled to the brim with gold totaled $27,980 -- a significant sum in itself and the coins' overall value if the world didn't care about history, art, and collectables. Adding those three qualities, the gold is worth around $10 million, according to an appraisal from a nearby dealer of rare coins, the Chronicle reported.

"It was a very surreal moment. It was very hard to believe at first," the man (he and his partner have not revealed their identities) said in an interview taped by Dan Kagin, the rare-coin dealer who first analyzed the buried treasure, according to the Chronicle. "I thought any second an old miner with a mule was going to appear."

Though the coins were well preserved, Kagin and David McCarthy, a senior numismatist in Kagin's shop, spent months cleaning the coins.

Research from the couple and their lawyers revealed little on the original owner of the coins, the reason they were buried, and the reason they were left behind. What is known is that whoever left them did an excellent job of preservation. Thirteen of the coins were considered the best-preserved examples of their kind or tied for the highest achievable rating. It was as if they came straight from the mint and then into the dirt. Indeed, one of the rarest of the group, an 1849 $5 piece, was produced in the short-termed Dahlonega, Ga., mint, according to the Chronicle.

"You hear all those Wild West stories of buried treasure, and you think they're fantasies - well here, this one really did happen," Kagin told the Chronicle. "And what is almost unbelievable about this collection is what pristine condition so many of them are in."

Whatever paranoia led the original owner to bury the gold, which he or she did at different intervals (as per Kagin), seemed to have temporarily transferred to the forty something year-old couple. Since their discovery, they've not only kept their names anonymous, but they'd also hidden the coins underneath a wood wile until a course for their sale had been determined.

"The first thing the family did after finding all the cans was rebury them in a cooler under their woodpile," McCarthy said. "They were terrified and had to think about what to do."

A portion of the coins will go on sale through Amazon.com collectibles; the rest (presumably the rarest ones in the best conditions) will sell to "to well-heeled collectors who desire the finest and the rarest," according to Kagin.

"This is not just a bunch of coins found in a bunch of cans," Kagin said. "Coins like this are art, and some of the best artifacts we have of characteristics of our society. You look at these coins and you see history. They are the Gold Rush, murders in the mountains, buried treasures, the Wild West, everything of that time. And it's all right here before you. You can hold it in your hands. Amazing."