The real deal! Gold and silver

[Frankn]

Frank, you are referring to Columbus NM aren't you? It's only three miles from the border. But you can
stay in the US by going to Lordsburg before dipping south to the Animas goldfields.

Right over the line from Columbus, NM which is a few miles south of Deming NM. I have stayed at the LoW ranch there many times. Frank...

 

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[Moonrover]

... Right over the line from Columbus, NM which is a few miles south of Deming NM. I have stayed at the LoW ranch there many times. Frank...

Frank, as per your suggestion, I did not mention your name when we were in the Deming and Columbus area last year. LOL

Spaceman ... Are you "mobile" as in traveling in an RV? We (wife and I) travel in an RV mainly to hide from bad weather, but I do try to land in a location where there is a rumored cache. So far it has been fun doing the research locally. Chatting with older people at historical societies, libraries, and even small restaurants will fill your notebook with ideas. A huge spin-off is you might get invited to "come on over to my farm and hunt all you want". At one memorable location, we not only were invited to hunt on a big farm, we were given a place to park the RV for free.

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Spacemen:

You have asked one of the fundamental questions for successful treasure hunting - how do you generate leads?

Most folks who stick with it have a specialty - Cache Hunting is a start, of course, who hid it? The research required to recover a bootlegger's horde, for example, is different from a soldier who got lucky in an army crap game.

One of the best ways to learn is to study recoveries. Obviously they are gone in that specific case. But a dentist who cheated on his taxes and tucked away gold scrap probably isn't unique.

The great books by "Karl von Mueller" are excellent places to start: Sudden Wealth, Treasure Hunter's Manual #6 and #7, and the very interesting Waybills to El Dorado are the textbooks for Treasure Hunting 101.

Study local history. During The Great Depression the Works Progress Administration (WPA) published Guides to every state, many cities, and some regions (Cape Cod, Death Valley, etc.). These are excellent sources of leads. So are autobiographies and published journals and diaries.

I don't think you'll have much luck going to a local historical society and making in inquiry about treasure leads. If you are seeking local information, family research, or something similar you will probably be more successful.

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

 

[abbynormal]

I find that I talk to older folks about my metal detecting, and they give me leads. Got the best leads ever by getting permission to dig on the property of a retirement home, and then being very friendly to all the residents who come out to see what I am doing. I have one that sounds really good but I am afraid to go ask for permission because of all the No Trespassing signs and other signs at the bottom of their long driveway. Oh well.

 

[Owassokie]

After scouring this board I have only seen legends, hoaxes and non-findable caches. Without referring me to online sites or books, how do you find any real leads? My thinking is maybe lost items that have not been chased as much. I am looking for something real that you can hold in your hand at the end of the day.
Thanks for any input.

Do you think other cache hunters are looking for non-findable caches? Hoaxes, legends? If we knew that a 'lead' would result in "something real that you can hold in your hand", it would already be found. You're asking for something you won't find on Tnet or anywhere else online. Your desires are the same as every other hunter. The difference is that you think a stranger on Tnet is going to give a lead on a can't-miss cache find.

Your best bet is to head to a part of the world where there is potential. If you're really interested in travel, maybe consider Europe. Talk to everyone, make friends, and do the research. Also, you asked 'how do you find real leads?'. The answer: You don't. The only way to confirm a lead is to find the treasure. Right? No-one knows if a lead is real, no matter how you find the lead or who tells it. Even if the lead seems great, you may be chasing a treasure that has already been found. When people find a treasure, they often don't tell because they don't want someone else laying claim.

 

[spaceman]

I came back from my road trip with nothing to show but the wear on my tires and a big fuel bill on my cc. Just took off heading south taking my time slowly and talking to the locals but man was it boring sitting around playing dominoes and listening to all the medical issues with those guys. Good folks but none knew of any good sites to hunts and it was the same old digging up trash around old house and barn foundations. And finding the old guys taht may know something is a whole lot harder than you think. Maybe it is a good thing that my house didnt sell after all but with winter almost here Im going to head back that general direction when I take care of house issues. Before I left I spent well over a week reading that PA buried treasure thread and now the guy that started it just left and took his thread with him and I am just a little more than PO about that. Never could get a straight answer from him anyway so I figured it was all just BS anyway. So after a little rest Im going to do it again somewhere south and hope I have better luck. Thank you all for the advice and unlike Frankn I will let everyone know if I ever do find the big one.

 

[Frankn]

I came back from my road trip with nothing to show but the wear on my tires and a big fuel bill on my cc. Just took off heading south taking my time slowly and talking to the locals but man was it boring sitting around playing dominoes and listening to all the medical issues with those guys. Good folks but none knew of any good sites to hunts and it was the same old digging up trash around old house and barn foundations. And finding the old guys taht may know something is a whole lot harder than you think. Maybe it is a good thing that my house didnt sell after all but with winter almost here Im going to head back that general direction when I take care of house issues. Before I left I spent well over a week reading that PA buried treasure thread and now the guy that started it just left and took his thread with him and I am just a little more than PO about that. Never could get a straight answer from him anyway so I figured it was all just BS anyway. So after a little rest Im going to do it again somewhere south and hope I have better luck. Thank you all for the advice and unlike Frankn I will let everyone know if I ever do find the big one.

The IRS will love you. They need the money to cover BO care and will welcome your voluntary contribution.
lol Frank...

 

[50cent]

The IRS will love you. They need the money to cover BO care and will welcome your voluntary contribution.
lol Frank... View attachment 890894

scarred for life
one of the scariest pictures I've ever seen.

I'm going to print it out, punch holes where the eye and ear is, and use it as my halloween costume. Thanks alot.

 

[Frankn]

scarred for life
one of the scariest pictures I've ever seen.

I'm going to print it out, punch holes where the eye and ear is, and use it as my halloween costume. Thanks alot.

Your welcome. It is a computer painting from a sketch in de Vinci's sketch book. Here's another. The credit is at the lower left. If you click on it twice and your eyes are real good, you can read it. The original file was for a 16x20 image so it shrunk in the translation to internet. Frank...

 

[50cent]

Your welcome. It is a computer painting from a sketch in de Vinci's sketch book. Here's another. View attachment 891247 The credit is at the lower left. If you click on it twice and your eyes are real good, you can read it. The original file was for a 16x20 image so it shrunk in the translation to internet. Frank...

you da man Frankn

 

[spaceman]

The IRS will love you. They need the money to cover BO care and will welcome your voluntary contribution.
lol Frank...

I dont like paying taxes as much as the next guy but if I were lucky enough to find a large cache I would certainly not be wanting to look over my shoulder all the time. But to each there own.

 

[spaceman]

Well Im back and mostly empty handed. Cache hunting is a tough business. I did the usual out west deal but circled back around and spent most of my time on the beach. The weather and scenery were much better there. This is what I figured out in a nutshell. The LDM is just on paper as is the FF box of goodies. The beaches are stripped clean except for the pocket spills and occasional piece of jewelry. I think the biggest factor in finding a cache is LUCK. Which I dont have much of incidentally. But I stuck a blade in the dirt enough times that it should be my turn by now. Ill summer back here and get ready for the next trip. Like I said its my turn and if I find it Ill show it!

 

[Dave Rishar]

Has anyone here ever heard of any good cache recovery stories involving other people, preferably unnamed? I'm curious about what sorts of things have been recovered in the past, and where. (By "where," I mean in a very general sense - say, in the barn, or under the tree by the garden. No place names please.) No names, no places, no dates...just what (generally) was supposedly uncovered and how.

Unfortunately, I only have a "one that got away" story...maybe. It's dawned on me that the machine that I was using at the time - a Silver uMax - may not have had the depth in that particular soil to find what might have been down there. Sadly this was almost a decade ago and I don't remember which damned tree this happened at, and the metallic marker that got me interested is gone...so I may just have to check all of the trees in that area to be sure. The site in question was homesteaded by subsistance farmers, but it was also used by bootleggers during Prohibition. Is/was something there? I won't know until I take another look, but I haven't stopped wondering.

 

[lastleg]

spaceman: I'm very proud of your efforts in serious cache hunting. Most don't follow through when
they find out how difficult it really is. I once got a signed permit on a lead near a small town in Texas.
I was all fired up and left my day job to make my fortune. When I arrived at the home of the 300 acre
property owner I probably looked like a fool. I was given directions and was delighted to find a log
cabin near the gate, the story said the gold bars were under a plow disc somewhere on the property.

Long story short I found several rusty plow discs but no gold. I thought it was going to be easy but I
learned 300 acres would take much more time than I had to spend. I got my dad to come with me the
next time and I would not take anything for the private time we had together. He opened up about
his life for the first time and now that he is gone I know I struck it rich with a memory more valuable
than gold.

I thought of another resource I used in countless library visits looking for leads. Some libraries have
a section for county histories filled with personal stories of early times. A diligent THer can gleam
hints of places where a neighbor may have put down a cache. I still have a notebook of these private
leads I no longer have time to go after. They are not written anywhere else and most are not even
noticed by the public. This one hint can get you in the right direction. Examino*

 

[Rob in KS]

A long time cache hunter once told me...the detector is the LAST tool you use.

There is a lot of good information on here. If you read posts in this section, you (probably) won't get a hot lead but you will get a mentality, a type of thought process treasure hunters and hiders use. You'll learn research techniques and places to do research. While there is a LOT of stuff on the net, there is a lot that isn't. Sometimes the most interesting information is in musty old library books and newspapers. You have to enjoy the journey or it will drive you crazy.

There are several "real deal" treasure hunters here. Some of them have found some "things" but they don't talk about it. Several of these guys could write a book and some of them are. They have done decades of research to get the knowledge they now have.

 

[gunsil]

Old Buckaroo is right. You NEED Karl VonMuller's treasure hunter's manual #6 or7. They are long out of print but do come up for sale on Amazon or ebay at times. Most real caches are found inside buildings rather than out, at least the ones I know for sure about. This brings up trespassing and other legal issues, so you gotta be careful. Every metal detector owner dreams of finding a real big ticket cache, but very few ever find one. Good luck at it, but don't get frustrated when you spend years looking and still only find junk.

 

[spaceman]

Well on my last trip I stopped and spent time around some small towns talking to locals but its kind of hard to work into the conversation hey, you know of anywhere that might have something of value buried or hidden? And the local historical societies just had old pictures and books and some nosy lady that kept wanting to know what I was looking for. I got a few permissions to hunt for junk around old farm houses but that was about it. This time around I thought I would just bypass all that and found about the same amount of junk. Then there was the beach junk. Different junk but nothing to get an old man excited. I'll just keep on looking around until I get the one thing that is needed which is luck.

 

[Scott (MI)]

Maybe tell people you are writing a book and want to have it as accurate as possible. Instead of looking for treasure say you are writing a story about it and as an author you are doing research and want to hear real life stories.

 

[cw0909]

ive been chasing a cache for 25+yrs, i cant this year, (mother not well)
but thanks to that new fangled concept publish damn near everything,
ie: (the internet), im 10 steps closer to at least eliminating 6-9 possible
locations of where some of it ,it is or isnt, after those are checked, i prob
physically wont look anymore, i came across the lead back in 88, on vac.
and was asked about my md, then told a tale, after checking and searching
old microfiche in several states, found the $$$ did exist and were gone not
to be seen again
modern day caches
a buddy had bought up 10-15 foreclosed/condemned houses, and let me
search them and md them
last spring i found 5 rolls each, of the Presidential $1 Coins, yrs 2007-2011
all nice and neat in the bottom of 2 boxes of old kitchenware in the basement
in other houses found,a alf pencil clip on, jewlery, and baseball cards see jpg
just sold all those cards this yr as one lot, and other goods worth $$, that were
in the house and ground


coins
Presidential $1 Coins - By President – United States Mint

 

[lastleg]

In this hobby the deserted and maybe partly burned houses can be most exciting to hunt.
Usually come away with something good. Make sure you are not violating any rules.
Trouble is it spoils you from digging in the dirt.