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[coldwatergold]

This is really a sad state of affairs...here this site is up and running and nobody has posted a thing about treasure hunting. Well I'm going to start. Here's the deal, I have a 100 books or so that deal with looking for lost this and that , they make fun reading but most leads have been beat to death and anything that is published has had a small army of adventures off in pursuit of anything mentioned. What we need here are some info on little known stuff that maybe we could get together and see if we could find. This would be first or second hand info that may or may not be true but rings of authenticity(that's a big word, did I spell it correctly)  Here's what I kind of mean...my grand parents lived in Oregon and we used to go visit them about once a year of so because they were so far away, well we went once after my grandmother had died and I hear my grandfather talking about how my grandmother used to cash her social security check,get a bunch of silver dollars and then go upstairs in their  house and hide them up there. My grandfather never saw any brought out and used and looked but couldn't find anything after she died....so where is it? The house is still standing, but falling in bad decay, unlived in....to me this holds potential, anybody got ideas. Are you sitting on stories just like this?  coldwatergold

[HeySal]

No idea what room she might have ditched stuff in?  Wow - could be anywhere.  Check all window sills and moldings - top of doors for slits and slats.  Any false backs in any of the closets?  Tap floors for hollow sounds- the floor boards along walls could hide cavities.  Fake electric outlets?  In back of bathroom fixtures and mirrors?  If there wood posts on stair railings see if they unscrew. Any outside flower planters on windows?  Was (or is there furniture? Check to see if anything is taped underneath anything - bed posts that unscrew, etc - stairs that might lift easily with a cavity underneath? Clothes chutes to tape things in? Rafters to tape stuff on top of? False bottoms in chests or dressers?  Got a blueprint to see if there are any cavities in the house that might be covered?   Drop ceilings or other possible ceiling cavities? Old books that might have cavities cut out of them?  Inside lamps?  Under the soil in plants.  Between picture and backboards of hanging pictures.  Anywhere that there is space between two "walls" or boards, etc is fair game.


If you got rid of furniture, you might have accidentally passed on the fortune.  It is also possible that once taken upstairs, the stash might have been relocated after it got just so large.  If you know it was silver coins - get that metal detector, set it to silver specifically and start running it from ceiling to floorboard.  They are hard to run in a house because of pipes, wiring, etc, but if you get a good one that will only detect what you're looking for they might work inside. 

[coldwatergold]

The house is empty of any furniture..we stopped by there a couple of years ago (my neice and I were coming back from Alaska, but that's another story)just to see if we could find the property since I hadn't been there for more than 15 years and my neice wanted to see where her relatives had lived. Well after about 3 hours of looking we found it in the middle of a new neighborhood,,,the guy who owned it wasn't doing anything with the property because of the great big Elm tree that was growing there, he was afraid the tree would be cut down if the property was developed and didn't want that...anyway he gave us permission to go onto the property to see it and we did a walk thru...I looked upstairs because I remembered this tale but just glanced around and looked in closet areas and stuff, I really don't know if it is even still standing..but it is kind of an interesting lead.   coldwatergold

[hankpac]

If the place is in disrepair, off to help dismantle it, and make sure you sign an agreement that anything you find that is traceable to your family, you get to keep.
Lots of people stuffed coins into the wall, and let it drop, so it could be all the way in the basement, or merely in the wall on top of the sill plate. The metal detector is a good start, and being methodical about searching out likely insertion points.
don't let this one slip away.

[hankpac]

Another thought. In Brownsvile TX, there are a lot of metal detectors (persons using them, that is) on the beaches. There are location maps, and suggestions in the local tourist rags.
One of the sites noted, it the sunken boat on the shore, near the outlet of the Rio Grande.
It is promoted as a sunken treasure ship, and it is anything BUT.

There were hundred of boats and small ships plying the Rio Grande, in it's earlier years (from the early 1500's on). This could have been any of them, small cargo ships that took cargo from the ships anchored off shore, up to Brownsville/Matamoros.
Had there been any slight legitimacy to the claim that this is a treasure ship, it would have been dug up completely years ago. As it is, it sits on the shore, with the prow, and two mast stubs barely protruding from the sand. Fun to look at though.

[coldwatergold]

I was born not to far from Brownsville in a small place(then) called San Benito and in later years our family would return to the Harlingen area in the winter to fish between Padre Island and the mainland. I remember reading one time about a treasure ship on Padre Island that was reported as found, it turned out to be an April fools joke but I do read and hear about people metal detecting the beaches for old gold and silver coins that are washing ashore during storms....there must be a few sunken wrecks offshore that are still giving up their booty. Kind of sorry that we don't go down there anymore since my dad died....oh well, there is still lots to be found out in Nevada and the high sierras, just have to make time to go looking, the more you look the more you find.....coldwatergold