When I was in grade school back in the early '70s, I buried a small metal toy treasure chest (identical to the one in this photo) in my local park at the edge of the woods.
In it were a few fake Roman coins I made with dies I hand carved into modern aluminum foreign coins I had first sanded smooth, then stamped into lead disks I made from melting down solder. Plus a 1943 copper penny I made using a 1949, a 1914D made from a 1944D, and a three-legged buffalo made by shaving the leg off. I was an industrious child--just wanted to see if I could do it. They weren't great fakes and wouldn't fool anyone other than another kid like me. I didn't want to keep them after my experiment so burying them seemed like the logical solution. I actually wish I had kept them as mementoes of my misguided youth. They probably would look even less convincing today than they did when I was 13.
I went back many years later but the entire area, including where I buried the chest, was turned into a large pond. No idea if anyone even found it or if it ended up carted away to some landfill.
I have that same treasure chest coin bank from my childhood still.
Did similar things, but was around 6 or so at the time. All I remember was I was really big into pirates and burying treasure, just something I was born into doing for some reason. I remember once burying a cigar box full of plastic gold coins and plastic gems in my local playground's sand box. Never retrieved it, but I can imagine some lucky other kids did.
At some point during these incomprehensibly early years of my single digit youth, I dug many holes in my back yard and burried cigar boxes containing real coins. My dad operated several coin-operated machines at the time and would give me all the slugs and foreign coins that he sorted out because he knew they interested me. These were the coins I would put in the cigar boxes and bury for fun.
One day, some 20 odd years later, long after I had nearly completely forgotten my old treasure-burying past, I was digging in the backyard to plant some vegetables when I found one of the cigar boxes I had burried as a child. Inside along with some old pre-Euro European coins was a plastic Superman toy keychain I had treasured (and long believed to have lost) as well as a crumpled up empty bag of popcorn, the sell by date of 1997 on it confirming the era in which I had burried the box.
It had been so long I had nearly forgotten about all these tiny caches of loot, but then it hit me, and I remembered what I had done. Now, nearly 25 years after I burried these boxes I still haven't dug them all. One is burried four feet deep under a now full grown cherry tree. It was just a sapling when I was 6, so the roots have gotten in the way now. I don't remember what coins I put in that box, but it was the deepest hole I remember ever digging. I also buried an old sewing machine in the same hole. I only vaguely recall doing this but it's part of my family oral history that the cherry tree is "over the buried sewing machine". My mom still remembers the day I buried it much better than I do.
I however, remember deliberately keeping the knowledge of burying the treasure secret from my parents because I had been told not to bury valuables, the sewing machine I think was supposed to be their way of compromiseing with me - but I put the cigar box of coins in the hole too without them knowing.
I really cannot remember what's in that box under the cherry tree. But I know it was the most coins out of all since the deepest hole, of course needed the biggest loot. I also may have burried several dollar bills in a mini M&M's tube in the same hole - but I recall the hole being nearly filled in by the time I put the tube in it.
So below the cherry tree is possibly a tube of dollar bills, then below that is a cigar box of coins, and a foot or so below that is the sewing machine. There may be other things in the hole as well that I have simply forgotten.
Some person in the future will probably be perplexed when they dig in that area and find all that junk and ask themselves how an why it's all down there.
