A vehicle is seen smashed into the window of the Wells Fargo History Museum in downtown San Francisco, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. Thieves in the SUV smashed through the glass doors of the museum and made off with gold nuggets on display. (AP Photo/Kristin Bender) Image3of13 This courtesy photo dated March 28, 2014, from retired Wells Fargo historian Bob Chandler shows a historic gold scale inside its glass display case at the Wells Fargo Museum in San Francisco, California. The glass case was smashed in a robbery that occurred on Tuesday, January 27, 2015 but the priceless scale was not stolen. The thieves who crashed a stolen SUV into a Wells Fargo museum Tuesday in downtown San Francisco probably weren’t big history buffs, because the gold they stole was chump change compared to the priceless artifacts right next to their elbows as they scooped up the nuggets. An elaborate 1850s gold-weighing scale, in particular, was in the very case that the robbers smashed into — and its worth in Gold Rush history and banking lore is practically incalculable, saidRobert Chandler, a retired historian for Wells Fargo and an authority on Western history. Gold Heist: Thieves Nab Nuggets From Wells Fargo Museum CBS San Francisco “When we found out they smashed the gold scale case I was so worried, but I’m relieved they didn’t take the scale itself,” Chandler said. “It’s been in that museum since it opened in 1935, and it has far more significance than any nuggets they had there.” The 2-foot-high, brass-and-copper scale was made by the Howard and Davis company of Boston, and was used at the height of theCalifornia Gold Rushwhen Wells Fargo was crafting its reputation as the foremost authority for banking and weighing gold dug from the Sierra Nevada. A few feet from the scale sat an original Wells Fargo stagecoach — the most famous symbol of Gold Rush-era banking, and also priceless in historical value. The thieves apparently didn’t rip off any parts of those displays, or any of the other historical irreplaceables, including a vintage telegraph. Instead, they snatched up to 10 ounces of gold in ore and nuggets — worth, at most, $12,950 on the current market. The nuggets might be worth at least five times as much if they were able to be fenced for their historical value as Gold Rush-era artifacts — but that’s going to be highly unlikely, saidDon Kagin, a Tiburon gold and coin dealer who just published the book, “Profit from Gold and Rare Coins Now.” That’s because Kagin and every other dealer of note is already sending out notices of the theft to professional associations and sellers around the world. If the gold shows up on the market, it will likely raise alarms. “We check the background of historical gold, and nuggets are like rare coins — they’re worth more depending on the pedigree,” said Kagin. “They are artifacts, they tell a story. They’re more interesting than just plain gold.” He should know: In the fall Kagin brokered the sale of the 6.07-pound, Gold Rush-country Butte Nugget, the biggest such nugget sold in modern times, for around $400,000. Kagin also got snookered in 2011 when he brokered the sale of a similarly gigantic nugget for about the same price, and then had to force the seller to give back the money when it was discovered the nugget was actually from Australia, not Gold Rush country. And therein lies a lesson about what might become of the stolen gold. The thieves may try to pass the gold off as historic, but not from Wells Fargo. Otherwise they will have to sell it for meltdown price. A meltdown sale may have been the fate of about $1 million in historic gold nuggets — 750 ounces worth — taken from the Siskiyou County courthouse in Yreka in 2012, the biggest such burglary in recent years. Two Bay Area men are now doing prison time for the heist, but they never revealed what became of the gold. “That gold is either out of the country or melted down, and I believe it will never be recovered,” saidLisa Gioia, director of theSiskiyou County Museum. “It’s just terrible. That gold was worth a lot more than monetary value. It was our heritage. And now it’s just gone.” Chandler, the Wells Fargo historian, said Tuesday’s robbery was probably the first time gold thieves have hit a Wells Fargo bank of any kind — the museum is housed in Wells Fargo’s firstSan Francisco banksite — since the 1930s. He was confident, however, that the same bank whose investigators nailed stagecoach bandit Black Bart in 1883 — in San Francisco — will get the bad guys this time, too. “I’ve got three comments,” Chandler said. “This is personal. Hang the bastards. And Wells Fargo never forgets.” Kevin Faganis aSan Francisco Chroniclestaff writer. E-mail:kfagan@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @kevinchron