The coins stayed in their casings and sat on a shelf, their true value never realized, at least not until Kiernan recently reexamined them and had experts verify their authenticity.
For years, the coins sat on a shelf in the school's library, mostly ignored — until a classics professor asked specialists to come to the archive and examine them.
The collection was real: 40 silver Greek coins, three gold Greek coins and a dozen gold Roman coins — one from each era of the first 12 Roman emperors.