Treasure is Where you Find It

Where to Find Lost Treasure

When one thinks of treasure hunting the first thing that comes to mind is the multimillion dollar treasure troves of legend. There is no question that there are plenty of treasure stories that have their origin hundreds of years ago but by no means does this indicate that all treasure stories are old legends. A lot of buried treasure is happening right now even as you are reading this story.

There just seems to be something very comfortable about burying your treasure in the ground as compared to trusting some slick banker with it. So as long as people have money, they’re going to hide it around the house, in their backyard, or in a field someplace.

The many different schemes that people have for hiding their money are as varied as the reasons that they have money to hide. Aside from the distrust of bankers, probably the most common reason people have to bury money is that their procession of it can’t stand the scrutiny of the light of day. This would be drug money, stolen cash, and skimming from a legitimate business activity to name a few.

So we have all this money being stashed away and all we need now is some unforeseen event to create a treasure trove. It is absolutely amazing how the human mind works. People have intelligence to obtain the cash and figure out some clever hiding place and then, simple as it may seem, they promptly forget where they hit it.

I don’t know if forgetting is the number one reason for creating a treasure trove, but it is one of the most likely. The other is not been able to go back and dig it up, and the reason for this is usually death or incarceration.

There are several books available that go into detail about some of the places where a treasure hunter can look to obtain his fair share of what’s out there. “Hidden Riches” by Chas Albano and “Sudden Wealth” by Deek Gladson are two that come to mind, both are probably out-of-print but must have replacements.

What we don’t have with this type a treasure trove… is a background story of some notorious pirate or historical event that creates a legend, but rather thousands of individual treasure hoards that we don’t know about until they are found. So what I would like to tell you about is some of these found treasures and then let you draw your own conclusions as where to look.

The stories are similar to the one about an old timer whose relatives knew he had about $50,000.00 in silver that he kept in his homestead. When the old boy passed on the relatives and his administrator are still looking, and haven’t found it yet.

This is a good example where the treasure trove is hidden off the property. Probably in a field next door where he could keep an eye on it, out his living room or bedroom window.

Then there was a story of a businessman in Colorado who always brag that if anybody should ever break into his place they would get nothing because all of his money was buried on the slopes out west of town and only he could find it. After he passed on his friends and relatives have spent years looking for it.

We have a paranoid gambler who won consistently at several of the Las Vegas casinos and had amassed a reasonable fortune. He then cashed in the maximum amount of chips that would not attract attention of the authorities and hid the rest, cash and remaining chips, across the state line. Being paranoid, he suspected he was being tailed by two guys who might rob him and more than likely bury him in the desert.

He went back a week later with a detective bodyguard and couldn’t find the place. What he had done was to drive out of town, likely on highway 95, toward Arizona and when he had found a likely spot pulled off on the shoulder.

He walked to the cattle fence by the edge of the road and dug a hole and marked it with a hasty pile of rocks. While he was gone some maintenance crew cleaning up the roadway took away his rocks.

Or… how about the guy who robbed some narcotics smugglers near Belen, New Mexico. He was arrested two hours later and had less than $200.00 in his possession. His $50,000.00 heist disappeared in less than two hours and where it is hidden has a lot of heads spinning. He hasn’t been free since he was picked up for the heist and is now doing time for it. I also guarantee he’ll not survive the prison time to retrieve his stash.

I remember hearing a true story about a café owner at Fremont, Nebraska who hid cash in holes in his parking lot. He died suddenly and the new owners completely resurfaced the lot. The heirs had a big headache trying to figure out how to locate and recover the fortunes under the paving.

While the relatives were brainstorming as to how they could find the deposits without too much damage to the pavement a local wiseass snuck onto the lot and used his detector around the flower beds and shrubbery and then took off with several nice size cash rewards. He didn't get too far before the relatives caught up with him and recovered their money. He was lucky they gave him a reasonable finders fee. He could have been charged with grand theft. What he did was flat out stealing, so keep in mind it is up to you to determine if what you find is treasure trove or someone's property. You cannot search on private property or buildings without the permission of the owner.

One of the best stories around pertains to a Pittsburgh mill hand that had a penchant for playing and wining the sport pools. He also moonlighted as an auto Mechanic and the local rumor was that he lived off of his moonlighting and never opened his pay envelope. Almost every factory mill or community has one of these frugal guys. When this fellow finally retired he kept at his mechanical work and continued to live within his means. When he died there was only a little over $200.00 in his wallet. The weeds had not yet started to grow on his grave when neighbors and others had almost torn down his house and cultivated his large yard in a frenzied search for his rumored wealth. I wasn't able to determine the outcome of the scavengers efforts from my uncles papers but the mill hand's wealth was estimated at $100,000.00 to over a million dollars. Sadly, when he died there wasn't enough cash for his funeral.

A lot of these treasure caches are small potatoes compared to the biggest source of loose cash in the United States the political campaign funds.

To give you an idea about how much money is floating around let’s take a look at a recent item from the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Paul also contends that Mrs. Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly filed false reports with the Federal Election Commission about the money he spent on the August 2000 event.

In 2005, the FEC found that a committee related to Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign underreported by some $700,000 the amount spent by Paul-controlled entities. That committee agreed to pay a civil penalty of $35,000 and file an amended report.”

You can check this item yourself at http://online.wsj.com

Here was almost a million dollars that Hillary Clinton was keeping off the books and almost got away with it until the whistleblower turned her in… for which she was only fined $35,000.00

Now I have to admit here that someone as slick and devious as Hillary Clinton would not resort to burying the money in the ground, if she got away with it, but would probably launder it in some other way. However, there is a huge amount of money out there and the fed’s only recover about 3%

Consider… most of this cash is handled by small politicians nowhere as shrewd as Clinton and the amount skimmed each election year has to be in the multimillions. This has to tell us that a considerable amount will winds up being treasure trove.

We know it out there because Occasionally we hear of some of it being recovered. Several caches have turned up in the Kennedy area, a couple in south Florida, one in California and one congressman had his stash in his office freezer.

If you still don’t believe there is a lot of money being buried out there? Just consider the report of the director of the mint that shows an incredible mintage over the years. According to the mint there are an amazing number of dollars and half dollar coins that are supposed to be in circulation.

So how often do you actually see a dollar or a half dollar coin? I never see any. So somebody has to be stashing it away… because we know it’s not in the bank.

If you go into a bank and ask for a roll of half dollars the teller will act like she is about to trip the panic button. If you ask for a roll of new dollars you can expect one of those “you ought to be committed" stares. And it’s also not in the casinos. They all use slugs these days.

Presumably, then, there are thousands of mighty big hoards of coins around the country and you can be sure that a lot of them are underground because anybody smart enough to accumulate the money is smart enough to store it where it is not easy pickings for thugs.

From all of this it’s easy to see there is a huge amount of cash out there and it keeps growing so we’re not talking about millions anymore of it’s probably in the billions. If just a small amount becomes treasure trove that means there are millions just waiting to be found.

One more thing… you can be sure that the days when a treasure hunter confided to the news media are long gone. So when a real treasure hunter locates one of these treasure caches, you won’t know about it.