When most people think of treasure they usually imagine a large wooden chest brimming with golden coins and a jewelled necklace hanging out, but there are so many other types of treasure out there that most people wouldn’t even think of looking for, so here’s 5 ways you can find yourself some loot.
1) Known treasures
There are many historic artifacts and pieces of royal jewellery that have gone missing over the years, but the problem is narrowing the search area down to a specific spot. Unless you have your own submarine or mining grade ground sonar machine, then you’re going to be stuck trying to solve the clues that have been left.
There are several treasures out there that tell you exactly where they are buried, the only problem is that they are always in some sort of code. The most famous lost treasure that gives its location is known as the golden owl, which is a small statue buried in France that when found can be exchanged for a solid gold copy. The person who buried it thought the clues would have been solved in a few months, that was 18 years ago.
2) Mini Treasures
These include things that you can find at garage sales and metal detecting on beach’s. The amount of coins and pieces of jewelry you can find on a popular beach is quite surprising. As for garage sales this one can be a real gold mine if you know what you’re looking for, since most people just want to get rid of old things they found in the attic, there’s a good chance you may come across an antique or something made of silver.
Another good place to check is second hand stores and any shop that stocks used goods. Every once in a while someone will come in with a treasure that looks just like all the other items in the shop, but something as small as a signature by a special person or a rare hallmark could make the item worth thousands.
3) Gold Panning
A gold pan is very cheap, with my own costing only £8 and will last me a life time. There are many known gold panning locations across the world, but the problem with these is that they are known publicly. In one of the tourist style gold panning areas you can be working all day for no more than a few tiny specks of gold.
The trick is to research known gold locations and try to find a pattern to them, and perhaps trying a spot in-between two known locations to see if the gold seam stretches across them. One thing to keep in mine when it comes to commercial gold mine, is they wont even bother setting up an operation unless there’s a large amount of gold in the source. Its not uncommon for them to find a spot with tens of thousands of dollars worth of gold in, only to decided its not profitable to launch a large scale mining operation, and so its often left.
4) Metal detecting
Battle sites and ancient settlements are the best places to go metal detecting, as Europe has been the home of countless wars in its life and the people who fought and died in those wars very often dropped things in the mud.
With tens of thousands of soldiers lining up on both sides, when a volley of arrows or musket fire downed the first ranks, the other soldiers wouldn’t have stopped to pick up a something they already had, and so thousands of weapons, medals and pieces of armour were stamped into the mud.
Certain pieces of historic armour can go for tens of thousands, with medals normally being top of the list. The only problem with finding things with a metal detector is that they are usually in pretty poor condition, but every once in a while you can find something really nice.
5) Non obvious treasures
If your out hiking in the wilderness and you see a strange green colour to the rocks, most people would think nothing of it, but the trained eye would see it as a source of copper.
There are many other types of valuable metals out there other than gold and silver, and even if you don’t own the land or have rights to it, there are many mining companies who pay a pretty penny for the location of a high grade ore deposit.
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