I’d like to imagine that whichever Kokomo, Ind. resident (not to be confused with the place the Beach Boys are singing about) who is dropping valuable gold coins into a Salvation Army kettle every year for the past five is the kind of person who lives in a ramshackle house on the edge of town where the kids can’t help but peer in the windows and wonder. Is this a hermit with a heart of gold and the coins to match? 

Whoever it is, he or she dropped a tidy bit of change in the kettle last week, reports the Kokomo Tribune: A South African Krugerrand gold coin worth $1,200, which was sold last week by the Salvation Army.

“A great big thank you to whoever did this,” he said, noting that the money from the coin will buy three weeks of groceries for the about 1,000 people the group feeds every month.

Krugerrands are made from some of the purest gold in the world, he added, and this year’s coin was minted in 1978. The price of gold is down from last year though, when a similar coin sold for about $1,600.

It isn’t just Kokomo that has Krugerrands showing up — last year bell ringers in cities like Atlanta and Seattle also found a shiny surprise when the day was done.

“Thank goodness it’s not something that just happens in Kokomo,” he said.

Kokomo. That’s where I want to go.

Gold coin found in Salvation Army kettle [Kokomo Tribune]

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