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A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

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Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#21

Post by almost_usual »

markbnj wrote: post #11

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it…

Vehicle could mean anything, there are plenty of trails a heavily modded Jeep or Off Road vehicle can do but not a car.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#22

Post by rboyd »

madengr wrote: post #13

Would deciphering this be a prime use for AI?

I definitely think somebody with some CS chops has an advantage. Here's an interesting paper from some students that applied some filtering based on some of Fenn's other clues. https://dalneitzel.com/2016/05/03/arcgis/

Contrast this with a lot of the "solves" you'll find on /r/FindingFennsGold or this poor guy who convinced himself 'Home of Brown' referred to a realtor's office. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URitxNODZ8w

Maybe word2vec on the poem mashed up against a place names database and cluster?

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#23

Post by analogmemory »

markbnj wrote: post #11

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it…

I for sure would not tell anyone about it.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#24

Post by joeriel »

c1utch1 wrote: post #2

Might be better to offer several "easter eggs" instead of one jack pot. If people have been searching for it for decades to no avail then I'm not exactly inspired to go look for it either. A string of discoveries would get me more excited, even if the value was much less.

Article says he buried the treasure in 2010, not decades ago.

This feels a lot like Halliday's Easter Egg.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#25

Post by patio11 »

markbnj wrote: post #11

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it…

It's abandoned property, where the only person with a colorable claim obviously, publicly, notoriously, and intentionally relinquished it. It will depend a little bit on the laws of the state where it is found, but in general, if you find it, it is yours.

When you attempt to sell bits of it, dealers in e.g. gold coins might ask you the provenance, and then you say "It was the Fenn horde", and you probably show the photo you took on your camera phone because you're presumably smart enough to do that, and that's the end of that conundrum.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#26

Post by hentrep »

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be ironic if it was found a few years after it was hidden, or maybe even before he announced the Hunt... I mean, the finder would probably think "best not tell people where I got this from" a la Counte of Monte Cristo.

He has publically stated that there is significant financial incentive for whoever finds the chest to report that it has, in fact, been discovered. Presumably some sort of IOU note contained within?

Here is a fantastic podcast describing Fenn’s story: http://www.eisradio.org/item/003/

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#27

Post by walrus01 »

markbnj wrote: post #11

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it…

1) Mark the location by GPS coordinates, write it down in a few safe places, get back to civilization and make a plan

2) Hike out the hoard in several batches

3) If you are a particularly paranoid sort of person, unless the coins are worth significantly more by their rarity value, buy a $2000 furnace and crucible and melt them down into bars. Sell the bars at a slight loss below the value of 99.999% purity.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#28

Post by matte_black »

onychomys wrote: post #7

The most recent death happened just last year, when a guy slipped and fell down a cliff face in Yellowstone: http://www.ktvq.com/story/37560172/report-illinois-man-fell-...

Falling 500 feet takes about 6 seconds. Long enough for you to realize your life is over.

Re: A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue

#29

Post by piokuc »

analogmemory wrote: post #23
markbnj wrote: post #11

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it…

I for sure would not tell anyone about it.

And let the other people spend their time in fruitless search forever? Not very nice.
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