Possible Gold Cache in Michigan 3 Mason Jars

Phanntom

Full Member
Oct 21, 2012
144
42
Retired and traveling
Detector(s) used
Whites 6000di Pro SL
Whites Goldmaster II vSat
Whites Prizim 6T
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
This is a true and complete story of a POSSIBLE (you be the judge) gold cache. There won't be any dribbling out of extra clues, anything and everything is being told up front and honestly. Unless someone asks a question that brings up something I've forgotten and didn't include, everything is included in this original story.

What the cache is/was: over 2 3/4 Mason Jars of assorted US gold pieces.
How do I know? My brother and I used them as pokerchips when we played cards at her house every other weekend.
Last time "I" saw them, 1966. She was using the 3/4 filled jar as a doorstop.
What happened to them? That's the mystery. Had anyone in the family been a numatist the story would likely end here, but no one was.

My parents were young during the depression and neither actually really suffered as bad as many did but it did teach them thrift. My grandfather was a barber, my grandmother a homemaker. They made a decent living all their lives until his death in 1951. When the gov't outlawed the private ownership of gold, my grandfather would still get the occasional gold piece for his services and would simply keep it out and save it. That's where they came from and why the different denominations.

Around the house, they were never thought of as anything special...gold was fixed at $35/oz so no big deal. In retrospect of course the collector value would likely have far exceeded the melt...so yes...as a family, we were foolish. My mother I think did actually realized the value of them and in 1964 began accumulating silver coins, mostly silver dollars just as her parents had done with the gold...she had thousands of the silver dollars and half-dollars.

Every other weekend while I was growing up, we went to visit and because my brother and I had no other young cousins on that side ended up stuck with each other, usually honing our skills at poker and would haul out the jars of gold pieces to use as chips.

This explains how I know what was there, and when it was there last, to the best of my knowledge.

In 1967, my mother collared me as though it were an emergency to drive her to my grandmother's. She didn't drive and being a typical teenager with all those important things teenagers feel they have to do I tried to get out or it or at least put it off when she told me the story.

My grandmother was losing her faculties so a lifelong friend would check on her and keep my mother informed. She called my mother and told her that she saw 3 young boys, described as teenagers leaving her house as she arrived and after questioning my grandmother didn't feel from her answers that my grandmother understood the situation or even knew the boys beyond the first names of two of them. My mother in an effort to get me to understand the urgency reminded me of the jars of gold coins. So off we went early the next morning for the 100 mile drive.

When we got there my mother questioned my GM about the boys and all she got were vague answers when asked who they were and what they were doing in her house. She did repeat the same names her friend had given my mother. My mother told me to try and find the jars. I looked all the places I knew they'd usually been over the years. She kept moving them, I don't think for any particular reason other than she was a neatnick so probably kept trying to find a place for them where they didn't seem out of place. Anyway...I couldn't find them, nor could my mother.

Finally in an effort to get to the bottom of it I went to the local cop-shop and spoke with an officer there. I explained the situation, much as I've done here...when I mentioned the names of the kids, they were familiar with them. They said they never got into serious trouble, but they had interacted with them on several occasions. However...he did say they couldn't take any action only on the basis of a hunch, and while there was a witness to them leaving her house, and one of them lived only a block away...technically, they hadn't committed a crime. As I recall, he said if I wanted to file a report, they could then question them. As I recall I did file the report because he contacted my mother sometime later to tell her that they denied they'd taken anything...so a he said, she said. After I left the police station I went to the only pawn shop in town and nobody had pawned any quantity of gold pieces. I also went by the kids house and confronted him with his mother there. He denied they'd ever taken anything from her, but didn't deny being in her house...said she allowed it.

At that point we brought my GM to our house to live out her days. My mother had an auction house come in and sell most everything. She and I were there when they were going through everything and the jars never turned up. After it was emptied the house was sold.

The only other clue might be that my GM was an avid gardener. Each year, her side yard...about 30ft wide was her garden. It was about a 30 x 12 foot garden. In addition, there was a very large tree in her small backyard that was planted as a seed by my uncle that held sentimental value to her and my mother. If for some reason she would've removed it from the house to bury it....I would guess she would've done it in either the garden, or near that tree.

Other possibilities might be she hid it in the basement or garage. Garage, I doubt as she probably didn't go in there but a couple time my whole life. In reality...I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of the smaller denominations couldn't be found in the floor registers, dropped there while my brother and I would play with them.

Why am I relating the story now? I had posted another detecting opportunity a couple days ago and was reluctant to post this one because I could just see a bunch of people decending on the property at all hours day and night. Let's face it...that many gold pieces today would be worth a literal fortune. However, after posting the other opportunity, I looked at the zillow site to check the value with the idea I "might" consider buying the property so I could detect it. When I looked it up on zillow...it currently shows it's listed for sale as a HUD owned property, so it's vacant and now I could care less about disturbing people. But after I put a pencil to it it didn't fit my rental plans so scrapped that idea.

Do I believe it's there? I honestly don't know. I always figured it was a lot of gold pieces at a time when gold was still illegal to own so would figure they would raise questions if kids were trying to dispose of them or just spend them. Nothing ever turned up.

Should anyone want to go after it and have any luck, the only thing I ask would be for three $20 pieces, two for my brother and one for me that we can pass on to our kids.

For anyone with an interest, you can PM me and I'll give you the address and you can see the property on zillow or google earth. It's not a huge area to have to search....not like a farmers field, or some woods...and she was a pretty tiny lady, so it wouldn't have been buried any deeper I don't imagine than a foot or two at most...and IF buried, I'm sure it would be in her garden as that ground was turned over each spring and would be easiest for her to dig in. There's no treasure map, or or complicated cyphers to have to work through...just a little old lady's addled mind...which actually might be more difficult. I'm willing to answer any question I can, meaning knowledge and if something's a "best-guess" I'll state it as such.
 

Bigdogdad

Bronze Member
Mar 5, 2012
1,627
437
Primary Interest:
Cache Hunting
There are a number of TN members on the dowsing forum that will dowse a Google Earth photo of this site for you. Whether you believe in this type of thing is up to you. It will cost you nothing and is easy to do. Give it a try. I live in SW Florida so it a bit far for me to get involved. Sounds interesting. The odds are the coins are gone but a real treasure hunter does not worry abouts the odds.
 

sturrat

Full Member
Mar 30, 2012
193
171
Muskegon
Detector(s) used
Minelab Explorer
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
What part of michigan are you talking about? I live in the muskegon area.
 

OP
OP
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Phanntom

Full Member
Oct 21, 2012
144
42
Retired and traveling
Detector(s) used
Whites 6000di Pro SL
Whites Goldmaster II vSat
Whites Prizim 6T
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Sturgis, MI. It's about 2 miles above the IN border.

My common sense also says they're gone. The only thing that makes my gut reconsider is that while the oldest of the kids, (maybe 14 or 15 yrs old) was the only one I actually spoke to, with his mother present. He admitted being in the house and while he was a minor delinquent...his family seemed quite respectable. His mother didn't just automatically side with him and accuse me of attacking her son. It seemed like she wanted to get to the bottom of it as well. I also figured that since the cops talked with all three boys I figured the younger two would've "cracked". At that time the town was much smaller with a much older demographic and it always seemed like kids either spending gold coins, or trying to sell a lot of them that large would've been noticed.

As a kid with that much gold coin...what would I have done with them that wouldn't have raised suspicions (especially after cops came asking). I'd likely have hidden them. Where? No idea. Panning around on zillow there is an open undeveloped area not far from the house...maybe they had a camp or treehouse there and might have hidden them in that area. Again...just thinking out loud. Of course, even if they had....at some point, their brains would've fully developed and they would actually be aware of what they had.

My grandmothers name was Edna Carr. The property is 502 East West Street Sturgis, MI for anyone wanting to check property records for the period. You could also probably pull a copy of the police report. If you look at the property online at zillow or google earth you'll see two small wing additions, in fact one looks like it was built into the driveway. Those wings weren't there at the time...someone did those after the property left the family. The police report might be handy to learn the addresses of the kids in case one could get permission to detect those properties to see if they might be buried there. I was never at the younger boys homes so I have no idea of where they lived but the older boy lived about a block and a half as the crow flies away. That's pretty much all I can offer in terms of clues and my own thought process. I've just always been amazed that a cache of that size wouldn't have turned up.
 

truckinbutch

Silver Member
Feb 15, 2008
4,607
1,035
Morgantown,WV
Detector(s) used
Bounty Hunter Landstar
I see this as something worth someone looking into . Too far away for me . Your reasoning makes sense to me .
 

dougofpa

Banned
May 18, 2012
486
121
PA
Detector(s) used
Minelab Safari, Garrett ACE 250, Garrett Pro Pointer, Lesche Digger
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Sounds good enough...but I'm too far away as well....good luck
 

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