After the boys' sensational discovery went public, claimants started coming forward like ravenous sharks in a pool of chum. The Baltimore Sun reports that the giant mass of cold coins was being held by the Eastern District police station of behalf of the U.S. Gold Act of 1933 which made all gold federal property, so complications started piling up from the get-go. For a while, it seemed as though Henry Grob and Theodore Jones would have nothing to show for their excavation efforts. A dream come true was quickly becoming a dream lost to cold reality.
Their primary legal adversaries were Mary P. Findlay and Elizabeth H. French, two sisters who owned the house within which the coins (which were traced back to an organization called the Confederate Knights of the Golden Circle, as Legends of America reports; Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was a member) were discovered. Two years passed before the coins finally went up for auction at the Lord Baltimore Hotel and sold for $20,000. However, that wasn't the end of the line for Grob and Jones. Thankfully, the boys were rewarded for their due diligence and received $6,000 each (per the American Numismatic Association) for uncovering the long lost treasure that would shatter national headlines in the midst of one of America's most trying and impoverished times (via The Baltimore Sun).
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