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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

#51

Post by sametmax »

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.

If you intend to keep it "as is", it's not a problem.

But you would need to if you want it for it's moneytary value. Even selling in piece by piece on a black market, which is quite hard to do, will require you to advertise it.

However my guess is that whoever is smart enough to find it is smart enough to solve this problem as well.

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

#53

Post by syncopated »

Phlarp wrote: post #48
walrus01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not how physical gold works. My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later. I assume freshly mined gold has to go through some type of formal lab validation / certification for purity that puts it into this identification scheme. I expect nobody will…

Become a jeweler. Problem solved.

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

#54

Post by nylonstrung »

Phlarp wrote: post #48
walrus01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not how physical gold works. My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later. I assume freshly mined gold has to go through some type of formal lab validation / certification for purity that puts it into this identification scheme. I expect nobody will…

You could melt it down into rudimentary jewelry and then perhaps sell that to gold buyers, who don't have to report <$10K transactions to the IRS

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

#55

Post by ada1981 »

triviatise wrote: post #40

it goes to show like the netflix prize, x prize etc. Is that contests cause 10X the investment of time, energy, and money as compared to the prize. The expected value on these contests is very low. Instead of government grants, we should have government X prizes for solving various problems. Solar for under $x/watt, fuel efficient vehicles, etc etc.

Xprize and HeroX do this sort of thing.

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

#57

Post by dljsjr »

crooked-v wrote: post #56

I wonder how many people have died, or will die, looking for this treasure.

That's covered in the article.

> And for some, the quest has proven fatal. At least four people are believed to have died in accidents while searching. This led some to call for Fenn to end the hunt. He hasn’t, but he has added a few additional clues on his blog to try to help people stay safe.

> “The treasure chest is not under water, nor is it near the Rio Grande River. It is not necessary to move large rocks or climb up or down a steep precipice,” he writes. “Please remember that I was about 80 when I made two trips from my vehicle to where I hid the treasure.”

> “The search is supposed to be fun,” he added.

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

#58

Post by DanBC »

cryptoz wrote: post #6

> all artefacts that Fenn, a self-taught archaeologist, amassed during his own sometimes controversial explorations in the Southwest, reports Vox. The millionaire was criticised in the 1990s for excavating the San Lazaro Pueblo Indian site he bought, for example, and the FBI searched his home in 2009 in connection with the sale of artefacts looted from the Four Corners area, though no charges were filed. It sounds li…

It's a shame you got downvoted. I was interested in this article because I hadn't realsied before the controversy around his aquiring of the treasure.

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

#59

Post by kej »

triviatise wrote: post #40

it goes to show like the netflix prize, x prize etc. Is that contests cause 10X the investment of time, energy, and money as compared to the prize. The expected value on these contests is very low. Instead of government grants, we should have government X prizes for solving various problems. Solar for under $x/watt, fuel efficient vehicles, etc etc.

This is the approach the British and several other governments took for finding a reliable way to find the longitude of a ship at sea [1]. Dava Sobel's Longitude is an interesting but quick read about the problem and John Harrison's eventual solution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards

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

#60

Post by refurb »

Phlarp wrote: post #48
walrus01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not how physical gold works. My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later. I assume freshly mined gold has to go through some type of formal lab validation / certification for purity that puts it into this identification scheme. I expect nobody will…

My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later.

Do you have a source for this? My understanding is there is almost no tracking whatsoever of gold. Yes, if you brought in a new poured ingot, someone will want to confirm the purity, but there are no required identification stamps on gold that connect it with an owner (some gold dealer may add them voluntarily). Dealer will be happy to pay cash as long as they know they aren't get scammed.

My father in law buys gold coins all the time. They are all identical and there is no way to determine ownership. You can buy and sell in cash. No questions asked.

Now, if you went to gold dealer and tried to offload $1M worth of unmarked gold ingots, you're risking a call to the police who will ask you where it came from. But beyond that, it's a pretty unregulated market.

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