How to Find Treasure

Treasure hunters know things that most people don't know. Specifically they know how to find treasure, because - to start with - they know the most common hiding places for money and valuables. They know where things are commonly buried, and that people regularly die without telling a soul they have buried something. They know where to point their metal detectors when at the beach. In other words, they have developed special knowledge.

However, there is more to being a treasure hunter than knowing a few tricks and reading a few books. It also takes the right mind set. You have to have patience, for example, to dig up fifty almost-worthless coins just to find that one old rarity. You have to have the ability to mentally put yourself in the past and in the head of the person who buries a stash, in order to guess where to dig. You have habitually think about how to apply what you learn from one treasure hunt to the next.

With that in mind, here are some of the places you can find treasure. Each suggests lessons that can help you find other kinds of treasures.

Find Treasure Under Houses

In that same crawl space where I hid the silver (see the page Hidden Treasure) I found a chest with foreign notes and coins. It had apparently been forgotten by a previous owner of the home. It makes sense that crawl spaces would be a good place to search for hidden treasures. This particular crawl space was accessible from the basement, making it a better hiding place.

Hotel Rooms

People sometimes put cash in hotel bibles to keep it safe while they go out. Of course it is possible to forget that they put it there (a night out can have that effect on memory after all). More than one treasure hunter claims to have found bills in those bibles, so check them out next time you are traveling.

The owners of hotels and motels also report that businessmen on out-of-town trips take off and hide their wedding rings in the room when they go out for the evening - probably a prelude to going out to the bar to meet women, unfortunately. But fortunately for those seeking hidden treasures, the rings are sometimes forgotten, so the next time you're in hotel room, check all the places someone might hide a ring.

Abandoned Buildings

You never know what you might find in abandoned house or building. I recall going into an old building as kids and finding old magazines. They were so old that they were boring to us - but probably exciting and of value to a collector. Of course, most abandoned buildings are on private property (although I found one the other day on national forest land), so you'll need to get permission to search them legally, which you might get by offering a split of anything you find.

Above Ceiling Tiles

If the ceiling tiles are the removable type, they have probably been removed on occasion, perhaps to stash something there. A friend once confessed to me that he had carried many valuables into a store bathroom and hidden them above the ceiling tiles, planning to carry them out later. Fortunately he decided against a life of crime, but I wonder who found his stash when the mall was remodeled?

Wall Spaces

Often in a house there are places to access the spaces inside walls - good places to find treasure. You can start by using a mirror and flashlight to peek into the wall where the washing machine drain hose or dryer vent goes. Try running a metal detector along the bottom of the walls as well. First lower a bag of coins into a wall and put the detector over it, to see if you can distinguish between this and the nails and wiring.

Continues here... Finding Treasure