Browse links
US residents can opt out of "sales" of personal data.
I want a cut when you find it.
Terry Herbert stumbled across treasure, now called the Staffordshire Hoard, with his 18-year-old metal detector. Aside from gold and silver, the hoard had loads of war equipment including helmets, knives, and sword handles. The treasure dates back to the 6th or 7th century.
The Spanish galleon San Jose was a ship set to transport riches from Peru (such as gold, silver, and emeralds) to Spain to finance the War of Spanish Succession. The ship couldn't outrun English pursuit, and, after a bloody battle, it sank to the ocean floor. Spain, the United States, and Colombia have all staked a claim in the find.
The Nuestra Senora de Atocha was sunk by a hurricane near the Straits of Florida in 1622. It was found in 1985 by famous treasure hunter Mel Fisher. In it were 32 tons of silver, 3,000 emeralds as big as 77 carats, and a whole heap of gold. Fisher received 5% of the Atocha Motherlode: $20 million.
True story. The couch cost the student $215, but her discovery went to auction and fetched $27,630. The artist for the oil painting is unknown, but is said to have been close to Italian artist Carlo Saraceni. It was created sometime in the early 1600s, and it's known as "Preparation to Escape to Egypt".
Forrest Fenn was a pilot-turned-antiques-dealer. He spent a lot of time traveling the world and collecting artifacts. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decided to hide a chest of gold and artifacts somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. He has given clues to the location of the chest with a poem in his memoir: "Begin it where warm waters halt / and take it in the canyon down / not far, but too far to walk / put in below the home of Brown." It is believed that nobody has found the treasure yet, but Fenn has said someone's gotten within 200 feet.
Captain William Thompson, along with his ship, The Mary Dear, was tasked with the responsibility of keeping Spanish treasure safe during revolts in 1820. He got greedy, killed the Spanish guards, and buried the treasure. His crew was executed, but he was spared and expected to give away the treasure's location. Thompson said it was buried on Cocos Island near modern-day Costa Rica. When Thompson landed on Cocos Island, instead of leading the Spanish to the missing treasure, he sprinted into the forest never to be seen again. Not much is known after that, but the treasure is estimated to be worth around $200 million.
The Amber Room was originally a gift from Frederick William I to Peter the Great to cement a Russia-Prussia alliance. It was moved to Catherine Palace in 1755, and stayed there until 1941 when Nazi forces dismantled the entire room, packed it in 27 crates, and took it to Königsberg castle museum (modern-day Kaliningrad). During the end of the war in 1943, the museum's curator was advised to pack the room up and get it out of the museum. The museum was bombed the following year, destroying traces of the Amber Room. Some believe it's under the rubble in Kaliningrad, while others believe it was transported by boat and sunk at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
Max Valentin hid an owl sculpture somewhere in the French countryside. He released 12 clues as to the whereabouts of the owl and he answered treasure hunters' questions about it until his death. The owl has been hidden for over nine thousand days. Its location is still unknown, but you can check out the clues on the owl's website, or this really helpful Reddit post.
Made by the famous jeweler Fabergé, the eggs adorned in gold and precious stones were taken from the nobility they belonged to during the overthrow of the Russian tsar in 1916. Of the 50 eggs, eight were believed to be missing. One egg, found by a scrap metal dealer from the Midwestern United States in 2015, was valued at $33 million. The other seven are still lost, believed to be as far away from Russia as the U.S. or Great Britain.
Researchers are looking for Paititi. The Vatican archives holds a record from 1600 by missionary Andres Lopez describing a city rich in gold east of the Andes. Nothing has been found, but some have a hunch that this square-shaped mountain, may be the location of the "hidden city of gold." If you're going to try to find the lost city though, be careful. The area has dense foliage, tarantula swarms, and heavy rainfall.
Dutch Schultz was a bootlegger in prohibition-era New York. Rumor has it that Schultz had his assistant, Lulu Rosenkrantz, hide a five million dollar fortune in the Catskill Mountains. On October 23, 1935, Schultz and his gang got sprayed with bullets, killing Rosenkrantz. Schultz was transported to a hospital, where he died the next day. His fortune is still rumored to be buried between two pine trees with an "X" carved in them near the banks of the Esopus river.