Unique, "EB on Breast"1787 Brasher Doubloon from
The Gold Rush Collection
EPILOGUE
Fast forward one hundred seventeen years, to the fall of 1997.
The scene is Price Memorial Hall, currently the administration
building of North Georgia College & State University (NGCSU),
which is the most recent moniker of that venerable institution
of higher learning. The building was undergoing a massive
renovation project, in which the stately structure had been
stripped to its wood and brick skeleton. Of intense interest
among historians and Dahlonega Mint buffs was the original
granite stonework of the basement foundation, still standing
in all its majesty, three feet thick.
This interior view of the foundation had been unseen by
the present generation, as its former glory had been masked
for decades by sheet rock, under its utilitarian role of
providing office space to NGCSU staffers.
Numerous tours were given
through the old hall, and interest in local history, especially
the Dahlonega Mint's considerable contribution, was rekindled.
One momentous consequence was the discovery of the only-known
full-view photograph of the Dahlonega Mint building, which
had been the object of desire of many inspired historians
throughout the twentieth century. 
In 1932, Andrew W. Cain,
in his
History of Lumpkin County for the First Hundred
Years 1832-1932
, was unable to find such a photograph,
when the trail was not as cold. So elusive and important
was the photograph that one local historian called it
"The Holy Grail." The ghostly image was discovered,
of all places, in the office of the president of NGCSU,
in a file marked "Old Pictures." The current
occupant of that office, Dr. Sherman Day, had consulted
with one of his predecessors and discovered that the file
was sent over from the University of Georgia archives
in the 1970s. This file was undoubtedly still in Athens
when the earlier intensive searches were being conducted
at the Dahlonega campus. To those enamored of its gold
coinage, the Dahlonega Mint's rich history had come full
circle.
