Treasure Hunting

Between 1413 and 1433, seven fleets of Chinese ships were sent out under the command of the legendary Admiral Zheng He, a contemporary of Christopher Columbus. The last of these expeditions sailed to the Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and were wrecked, and still lie on the ocean floor today.

Associate Professor Phil Mulhearn, from the Ocean Technology Group and School of Geosciences, designed the advanced underwater imaging system used to conduct the ocean floor surveys.

The first survey, conducted in 2009, uncovered another 10 sites where treasure might be found, and a second survey is to be completed in 2011.

These wrecks are so important because any discovered sea treasure will reveal hidden secrets about the exchanges between the Far East and the West in the early 15th century.

“Sea treasure is far better preserved than treasure found on land,” explains Professor Ian Jones, the Adjunct Professor for Climate Change in the Ocean Technology Group.

So, while artifacts found above sea level will have been weathered and degraded over time, treasure found underwater on the seabed will be in almost pristine condition.

Earlier this month, the Confucious Institute held a public seminar at the University of Sydney where Professor Mulhearn and Professor Changqing Hu presented their expedition findings so far.

Share This

Boston, Massachusetts: In Blackbeard’s day, “coin collecting’’ meant swashbuckling, flying a Jolly Roger flag, and making rivals walk the plank at sword point. Today, it is a little tamer.

A new breed of collectors filled Boston’s Hynes Veterans Convention Center yesterday, traveling from table to table instead of sea to sea. But what they are searching for has not changed at all: treasure. “The fun is in the hunt,’’ said Andy Lustig, 49, a vendor from Nyack, N.Y.

Hundreds of people from across the country came to the World’s Fair of Money to find that something special. For some, that meant unusual coins.

For others, the historical artifacts on display were the true find.Still others sought precious metals they said are more reliable investments than the stock market.

“At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around spending money for money,’’ said Raquel McAninch, 33, a vendor with Colonial Trading Co. of Boston. “But then you come to these things, and you see all these characters, and you realize there really is something here for everyone. They all have their reasons.’’

More than 1,000 vendors set up stands to buy, sell, and trade coins with convention-goers. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History displayed rarely seen gold pieces, and the US Department of the Treasury set up an exhibit featuring an engraver, the design for the new $100 bill, and the largest US note ever printed — the $100,000 bill.

For longtime collectors, such as Sandy Gulde, who traveled from Scottsdale, Ariz., to help run a convention booth, it is the most thrilling event of the year.

“Every day, something is different; it’s so exciting,’’ she said. “From this side of the table, it’s great to be able to hook up a coin with a collector and watch them fall in love.’’

Many vendors selling currency base their merchandise value on various factors: the rarity of a piece, the metal it is made of, condition, and age, among others. Most are happy to talk about their merchandise and answer questions from inquisitive passersby. Some convention-goers, like Michael Moloney, 71, from Miami, like to shop around, chatting with vendors and examining the loot before buying anything.

“When people find something unusual, they just know it; and they want to hold onto what they’ve found,’’ said Moloney, who wears a button saying “I [heart] errors,’’ showing his affection for coins minted with mistakes or imperfections. Others at the show were all business.

“People want to dump their money into something that’s not the stock market these days, so they dump it in gold instead,’’ said Rich Moyer, a coin dealer from Hagerstown, Md., who hardly looked up from the piles of coins he and his son, Mike, were sifting through.

“We check the coin info against the wholesale price sheet and figure out if we can make any money on it,’’ Moyer said. “It’s a family business.’’

For many treasure-hunters, enjoyment comes down to what they walk away with.

“I like this place because there are so many cool coins and stuff,’’ said Lana Taffel, 7, of Belmont. “If you just walk around for a while, you can find what you were looking for all along. It’s like treasure!’’ The convention runs through Saturday. Donn Pearlmann, spokesman for the American Numismatic Association, the World’s Fair of Money sponsor, said up to 15,000 visitors were expected to attend this week.

Share This

Schranzerwald Forest, Austria – Millions are yet to be found by treasure hunters of all sorts. A fraudulent German financial advisor Augustine whose name has not been officially released, was arrested when a amateur treasure hunter found a suitcase with $185,000 and Augustine’s passport buried near Innsbruck, the capital in west of Austria.

After trials, in early 2002, Augustine was jailed for the maximum six-years and is now living in Bavaria, Germany. After publicizing this case to the public, this led many to get out their detecting gear and head out to look for the treasure for a nice reward, ten percent of the amount found and an award of $815,000.

Local treasure hunter Walter Fritz searches for buried millions in Ebbs, Austria

German police officials believe there is more to be found; more than 5 million was embezzled and hidden from investors while Augustine was working for the BDA bank.

The small town of Ebbs, Austria has benefited from the influx of treasure hunting visitors hopeful to fine a new fortune. As the story spreads, more are expected to travel to Ebbs, and join the hunt.

Share This

The Milwaukee cargo steamship L.R. Doty has been discovered after 112 years of wondering where it has sunk. The L.R. Doty is of great value because the 300 foot long ship was the largest wooden vessel, and the whereabouts of this ship were not known.

Brendon Baillod, the President of Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association spent 20 years of his life researching about the ship, and had remembered a local fisherman reporting that his nets were clashing against a strong object in the shorelines in 1991. He backtracked and took his diving crew down to explore the possibilities of the L.R. Doty being found. Jitka Hanakova, the 33 year old diver who was a member of the research team told the media that the divers spotted the ship as soon as they landed on the floor of the lake. He said that the ship has been well preserved due to the cold and fresh water of the lake.

L.R. Doty ship found 300ft below Lake Michigan's surface after 112 years

It was said that the ship was carrying cargo of corns way back from South Chicago and was headed towards Ontario in 1898 when it sank into the depths of water. When the ship sunk down it was pretty young, just five years old. Besides the 17 crew members out of which none survived the storm, the ship was also carrying two cats namely Dewey and Watson. The corpses of the ship’s crew are still said to present inside the boiler room which is said to be the safest place where one might have gone for shelter.

Share This

So after surfing the web, I stumbled across this site with metal detecting finds which had an inspiring story where treasure was found without even trying! A British farmer lost his hammer in his crop fields one day. He refused to buy another to replace it and instead just borrowed his friend’s Metal Detector. After Searching his crops for his hammer, he came up with over 15,000 coins of various metals, including gold, as well as jewelry and statues.

The government bought these coins from him for £1.75 million which he split with his friend who let him borrow his metal detector. Wow! What an amazing find!

Share This

This gets me excited! Just to know that there are still treasures like this makes me want to pick up my detector and get to work. Listen to this amazing find from Zimbabwe below:

M. Raisi -
“It was my second day of searching using GPX-4500. I only searched a few moments after some of my guys had given up for the day, and hey I got a signal. Believe me, what I found, it was one big gold nugget weighing 14.5 ounces.

I’m grateful for this modern technology.”

Well, I have one foot out the door to get on a one way flight to Zimbabwe. Ha. Not really, but I am motivated to go out and search now.

Share This

Marty says,

“I recently purchased an Excalibur II and wanted to share with you a couple of my first finds with it. This is my third water machine and by far the best. I have only had the Excalibur II for a few weeks and have had some incredible luck. I got down to the beach after the holiday weekend and got not one but two 14k rings. The depth of this machine truly amazes me, I really like the fact that the Excalibur II ignores iron but will sound off on the good stuff right next to it. I think its going to be a great year!”

Hey folks, this is an awesome hobby. It gets you out in the fresh air while getting exercise and eventually finding your very own treasure on land or in the water. So go out there and give it a try. And if you’re in need of a detector make sure to visit Kellyco.

Share This

Today I found an older article that I thought ya’ll mind find interesting. It was written for The BBC in September 2008, and is called “Living off the sewers of gold.”

From what the article says, the sewers of Dhaka, Bangladesh, are disgusting. The city is overcrowded and polluted, and basically as awful as one can imagine. But many people make a living by panning for gold in the sewer’s dirty water.

With stained fingers, men pan for gold in the drains in exactly the same way as the treasure-seekers of “the legendary California gold rush of the 1850s.”

So how does the gold get there?

Tiny specks of gold are accidentally brushed into the open sewers that run alongside the narrow streets of Dhaka’s historic “gold bazaar.” The area is lined with shops selling gold jewelery, about 350 shops which employs about 20,000 people! The gold is softened over charcoal fires or gas burners and then made into necklaces and earrings.

Every morning all the workshops and gold shops are swept clean, the gold specks (and sometimes even precious stones!) get swept into the streets and ending up in the sewers.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the price of gold has been tempting everyone at nearly $1,000 an oz. But on the flip side - gold is now so expensive that many people aren’t buying it anymore, the district is slimming in size, and the amount of gold being swept into the streets is getting smaller and smaller.

Share This

Local online newspaper, The Wenatchee World is stating the obvious to those of us at TreasureHunting.com.

Metal Detecting is a “damn good hobby.”

Jim Nuesse has used a metal detector for more than 20 years and once found a 2.5-ounce nugget of gold in Alaska, although he says the most common find is pull tabs and bottle caps.

“It’s all a part of it,” Nuesse said. “Anything I find doesn’t go back in the ground,” he said, adding he either takes it to the garbage can, or it goes into his pouch with his other finds.

On Monday after about two hours of searching, Nuesse had found a handful of money and a needle for pumping up balls. This is much more than average, which he attributed it to the first search of the year.

Nuesse estimates he got on his knees about 100 times during his outing Monday.

“At 68, it’s a damn good hobby. It keeps you in good shape”

Well Jim, we whole-heartedly agree! Keep it up and happy hunting!

Share This

If you’ve never heard of the American Civil War “Battlefield Ring,” don’t feel bad. Neither had we. But now that we have we are completely obsessed.

According to the Winchester Star, metal detectorist Tony Lockley of Frederick County found a ring, referred to by some as “the find of the century,” and as a “national treasure” by others.

The story goes like this:

21 years ago, Tony and his friend John Tracy Campbell were metal detecting on private property when John got a strong signal. He handed his metal detector to his wife to pinpoint the signal and start digging. When they finally got to what was giving the sound, a large, gold-plated ring, size 11, popped out of the soil.

That’s an average enough find… but this ring was inscribed… with the names of 16 Civil War battles and skirmishes that starts with the engagements during the 1862 Peninsual campaign (York town and Williamsburg) and ends with the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. In between were landmark battles such as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and The Wilderness.

John and Tony were definitely hooked on metal detecting but neither of them really understood the uniqueness of the ring they found. In fact, John even gambled the ring in a weekly poker game during the mid 1980’s!

Tony, however, purchased the ring back in 1987 and displays it at Civil War relic shows and artifact exhibitions.

The Winchester Star, however, hits the nail on the head with its closing two paragraphs:

“Nonetheless, his curiosity remains at a high level of “pique” regarding the band’s origin. From where the ring was found, ’tis safe to assume it belonged to a Union soldier — most likely an officer who could afford to have the band made — in Gen. Phil Sheridan’s occupational forces that ringed Winchester after Appomattox. The names of the battles inscribed — for example, Antietam rather than Sharpsburg — clearly indicate Union ownership, while the dates of the battles suggest a post-war crafting.

The nagging question, of course, is who the ring belonged to. As there is no hint of identification, that basic fact is most likely lost to antiquity. What might be ascertained, though, is the unit to which that particular soldier belonged. The clue critical to solving this mystery may lie in the minor engagements inscribed on the ring. Two such battles are Williamsburg and Hanover Court House, fought in May 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign. Presumably, if one can pinpoint the Union units engaged in those two clashes and then determine if any were involved in the other 14, the search can be narrowed. Sounds like a job for PBS’s “History Detectives.”

And as for Tony,… he keeps a metal detector in the back of his pick-up, just in case…

Share This