The BEST book for generating leads.

[Shortstack]

About 10 to 12 years ago I came across a book about developing your own treasure leads in a MD store in OKC. I went to my favorite local cafe to have coffee and read it. After reading the first couple of pages and thumbing through the rest, I drove back to Wayne's and bought a second copy that I left sealed in it's clear plastic envelop for archiving. It's THAT good. The title is Treasure Lead Generation , by Helm Associates of Austin, Texas. No personal names for the publisher or the writer--only initials. It was copyrighted in 1986 and has only 63 pages, but there is pure gold in those pages. I suspect that the folks envolved with this book are some posters on this site.

The dedication page reads:

Dedicated to Two People I've Never Met:
J.FRANK DOBIE
and
KARL VON MUELLER



Dobie created the hunger,


Von Mueller said; "EAT.


( My words next )--This book tells you how to "harvest" the goods and set the table.
Enjoy.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

How to Research for Treasure Hunting and Metal Detecting From Lead Generation to Vetting - Grab it through Amazon!

[Treasure_Hunter]

Ran a search on Google, hard to find now.

 

[TreasureTales]

Sounds like a great book. Can you list chapter titles?

Saw that this book was available in a few shops, priced at $6.95 with shipping at $4.00 and up. 63 pages, right?

 

[Born2Dtect]

I did a google search and found a lot of listings. Did not try to order so I don't, know if they are actually still available, Most listed for $6.95. The funny thing was I found where my detecting club has a copy of it in their library. Ah, a little light reading for me next month.

Ed D.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I will try again, the ones I found when I tried to connect were dead links. Thanks

 

[godisnum1]

I wouldn't mind having a copy... anyone know where can I find it

Bran <><

 

[Jeffro]

I just sent for a copy from "The Lifestyle Store"

 

[Shortstack]

Sounds like a great book. Can you list chapter titles?

Saw that this book was available in a few shops, priced at $6.95 with shipping at $4.00 and up. 63 pages, right?

Yep, 63 pages total. Here's the chapter / subject headings:

CONTENTS

Introduction

Foreword

1. Use of This Guide
2. The Searcher's Mind And Virtures
3. Limiting The Search
4. Gathering The Tools
5. Dark Clouds
6. Developing The General Lead,
Research Shortcut
7. Geographical Validation Of General Lead
Shortcut, Caution
8. Expanding Into A Series Of Specific Leads,
Shortcut, More Caution
9. Rating The Specific Lead
10. Geographically Locating The Specific Lead,
Shortcut
11. Conclusion
Appendix A Letters & Addresses
Appendix B With List of Historical Societies
Appendix C As I Was Saying...
Book list / Glossary


To illustrate the raw meat value of this book, I've decided to quote the " Introduction " written by the publisher. It's a grabber.

QUOTE:

INTRODUCTION

Finding the author and his work was as much a treasure hunt, a research, as I have ever accomplishsed. My personal quest for this written guide lasted fifteen years. Early on, looking for treasure, it became clear that "just waiting for a good lead to show up" would soon dull my enthusiasm. Besides, all the famous book-described, newspaper-headlined, paperbacked TREASURE stories already had an old and a new crop of hunters stomping over well-pounded ground. I kept searching and one day I read across a particular ad which caught my attention. From the reading to the greeting was thirty-six hours.

The author's background includes a Degree in History, a period of time studying the Law and an intense study of Computer Science. He's a business man whose personal time to research is extremely limited. Therefore his logic dictated the straight-arrow approach. No mysteries, just get to the point. He has done so.

The most IMPORTANT word for you to fully understand in his writing is: "GENERATED". You will become your own generator of valid treasure leads. That's what this manual is all about. You will not have to wait for someone else to hand you a tired, worked-over, revised, re-written, re-hash of a NO-LEAD. You will generate your own fresh, valid waybill to a cache. No better waybill will exist.

How to do treasure lead generation is a primer that gives you both a foot and a hand-hold on a sometimes vertical path. Let this work be your guide to greater adventure and more profitable results.

NAC
Austin, TX
Sept. 1986


UNQUOTE

Here are some quotes from the author as written in the FOREWORD to this book:

"... in defining treasure as rare, valuable and desirable, we should add compact, portable and easily convertible to money."

" The sole purpose of this document is to provide you with the means of logically uncovering 'leads' that can be used to increase your chances of finding some of that treasure."

"Seek Spanish treasure and sooner or later you are going to find documents written in Spanish. I don't read or speak present day Spanish, much less the Spanish of four hundred years ago."

"A metal dedector and coin shooting can be a lot of fun. But, clad coins with mint dates after 1964 just didn't stir my blood."

"I read and reread every treasure hunting publication I could get my hands on. In each one, every author agreed that well-researched leads paid off. They all agreed, the better the research, the better the lead. There was only one problem with the stories, apart from rather casual mention of libraries, land records, and old newspapers... No one laid down the guidelines for "well-researched leads."

"...my results are in my pocket. I dont't claim to have the best methods for uncovering treasure leads. I don't even claim to have all of the methods. But I do know methods that can generate valid leads, if properly used."

"A metal detector in the closet signals no coins nor treasures. Unused methods of finding leads will produce no leads either."

"...effort is still up to you. The methods are contained in this document."

"These methods do require effort. And they can produce more leads than can be followed up. The search effort required is such that I couldn't begin to exhaust the leads in Texas, much less, the United States."

"Many people search for the pleasure of the search. Heres's a salute to those who find more pleasure in the finding."

"Author, D.H.B."


That's about all I can do to get anyone interested in getting this book. I will not photocopy and post it on the net---that would be stealing. At least in my never humble opinion.

 

[TreasureTales]

Thanks for the chapter titles, that give me enough info to decide to buy a copy.

Jeffro, did the Lifestyle Store charge $7.00 for shipping? I started to order a copy of the book from them last night, but their online quote for shipping was $7.00! Too much when it excedes the price of the book being shipped, IMO.

 

[Jeffro]

Yes, they did. So I ordered a couple more to justify it.... LOL! If that makes any sense.

3 books= $35.00 including shipping. Easier to justify the shipping. (BTW, 3 different books, not 3 of the same title.)

 

[Jeffro]

Just got this book today, all I can say is AWESOME!

 

[Shortstack]

Just got this book today, all I can say is AWESOME!

I've been monitoring this thread, hoping you'd post again when your copy came in. I'm happy you see the value of this little book. It was published just before the worldwide web " took-off " and geneology became such a popular hobby. I mention this because those facts will help you streamline the " hunt " as outlined in the book. Also, using the cover of family research, you won't scare off the librarians, archivists, museum currators, etc.

With the price of gasoline over $3 a gallon, the web can save mucho money even while researching your home county. Here's some websites I think you'll find very interesting and useful:
www.rootsweb.com
www.cyndislist.com
http://fototagger.com/

You'll find a bunch of free, downloadable how-to info at Cyndi's List as well as several free, downloadable blank forms you will need for your new TH'ing " cover ". Who knows---you just may start a second hobby. One of MY hobbies is geneology so everything sort of melds together. On Rootsweb, you will find gobs of links to historical ( geneological ) research websites in almost every state and practically every county within that state. If you are not familiar with family researching, you'll be totally amazed at the on-line information available. If you are ALREADY in that hobby---I've just wasted a lot of time " preachng to the choir."

I recommended the FotoTagger application ( freeware ) in another thread here on TreasureNet. Take a good tour of this site and you'll see how useful this little app will be. Imagine being able to insert labels with arrowhead indicators into a photo copy of a satellite view of a THing area or labeling things in a photo of an old farmstead---or anything else you can photograph. This little application is a hundred times faster than those big photo programs like Photoshop and GIMP. ( I have GIMP ) FotoTagger does only one thing--inserts your info tags into photographs and that's ALL. No morphing, color correcting, flipping, etc. Just tagging.

I appologize for being so long winded in this post, but your response to the book tells me that you " have the eye " and a THer's common sense. Good luck.

 

[TreasureTales]

shortstack, I'll be ordering Treasure Lead Generation in a couple of weeks, when I return from a treasure trip.
Your recommendation, followed by Jeffro's, made me a believer. Word of mouth is the best recommendation for almost everything. Thanks for starting this topic.

As an amateur genealogist myself, I know what you mean about the research available online. It's truly remarkable what anybody can learn about family, history, and treasure leads when doing ancestral research. In fact, I got so hooked on doing research online that I became a volunteer for one of the archives I used for my own research. I look up obituaries for folks who can't get to the libraries themselves. I do it all for free, but my work generates money for the volunteer organization that helps support the archives I volunteer for. You would not believe the info I've accidently found for myself while doing obit research for others!!!

 

[Shortstack]

Thanks, Treasure Tales,for the good words. Isn't it interesting how closely the search techniques for THing and Geneology overlap?

 

[Jeffro]

Check my thread below about cannibals- its a riot. Owen was one of my family, not a direct line though. Its definately interesting what you come up with. My Mother is into geneology big time.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,86954.0.html

 

[TreasureTales]

Geez Jeffro, I'm steering clear of you when you get really hungry!!! LOL

All my life my mother told us we had ancestors who were part of the Donner Party. When I began doing genealogy, I couldn't find any connection to the members of the Donner Party, which is both a blessing and a disappointment. Although I would like to say I had cannibals in my background, I can't do that. However, through genealogy I learned that some of my great great grandparents came across the country in covered wagons and arrived in California in 1854. They lived here for a few years, moved to Oregon for 3 years, then came back to California - never to leave this state again. I have a photocopy of a letter my great grandfather wrote to his cousin back in Indiana. He wrote that they were leaving Oregon because there wasn't enough money nor enough girls to make it worthwhile. LOL, he was a young man when he wrote that letter. When they returned to California, he married a 14 year old (legal in those days) and she became my great grandmother. History is so fascinating!

I'm looking forward to reading the book recommended by shortstack, should be helpful for genealogy and treasure hunting.

 

[Shortstack]

While I was stationed in Oklahoma, I was able to do a lot of research into the Indian Territory and early days of OK as a state. I came across some information concerning a small tribe of Indians who lived in the border area of northeast Texas / southeast Oklahoma ( Indian Territories ) and were known practitioners of cannibalism. They were considered scavengers and shunned by other indians throughout the region. If some of their members happened to run into a stranger ( Indian, Mexican, White,...) they were just as apt to kill that person and have some fresh meat over a quickly built campfire. This tribe was considered beggars and useless and were known to be too lazy to farm and too inept to hunt.

I'm tempted to put down a name here, but won't because my memory may be faulty and I'd never want to " name " an innocent tribe. I had NEVER heard of those people before. Then, one day while doing some random reading in the state archives, there it was.

I mention this little historical fact as an example of how a bit of history can suddenly hit you right between the eyes. Sometimes these " bits " can lead to MONEY!!! THing at it's best.

 

[hsjrev]

Nevermind. I got an e-mail from the place I tried to order it from saying it wasn't in stock and they could no longer get it.

 

[ericwt]

Nevermind. I got an e-mail from the place I tried to order it from saying it wasn't in stock and they could no longer get it.

The Lifestyle Store still has 4 copies of it. Research Unlimited is totally sold out.

I would grab this while you can.

 

[EDDE]

going to jump on this one also 8)