How to Find a Secret Stash

Once you start to get why a some people have a secret stash, you also start to realize where they might be hidden. People always have hidden money and valuables and will continue to do so. These treasures are lost for many reasons, but one primary one: death. If a person tells nobody about their hiding places before they die, it can be many years before they're discovered.

People buy gold and silver, for example, and then commonly bury it or hide it where robbers or government agents won't find it. Some are worried that gold will be confiscated as it was under Franklin Roosevelt's administration, while others are just being safe. If owner passes away without telling anyone, the gold can sit there for a hundred years or more. Some of the best places to look for stashes then, is in and around old homes. The longer the history, the more likely it is that someone hid valuables and left them behind when they died.

Finding this kind of secret stash requires a certain perspective. Try to think like those who would have hidden their money or valuables. In the case of the latter the owner expects to keep them hidden long-term, like the gold mentioned above. This makes burial likely. But with cash people often want more access, so it is more likely to be hidden in walls in the house, or in a coffee can in a shed.

Know of an old house owned by a family member? Get permission to enter and check it out. Here are some of the places that people stash money and other things.

Sinks - Look under kitchen and bathroom sink, and look especially for extra pipes that do not connect to the drainage pipes. It was common in the past to hide gold coins in pipes.

Basements - Look above ducts running along the ceiling, and inside the holes in the top row of cinder blocks that make up the walls of the basement.

Old tanks - Heating oil tanks were once a favored place to hide coins. Gold or silver coins were dropped in as a saving plan during the Great Depression - when banks were not trusted. You can shake the empty tank to listen for anything rattling around in there.

Pump houses - Look inside old pump houses for signs of a secret stash. Extra pipes should get special attention. It was common at one time to put a pipe full of silver coins in a pump house to hide them (according to treasure hunters who have repeatedly found these stashes).

Car seats - I have sometimes kept an emergency twenty-dollar bill under the car seat on the driver's side. Probably others do this as well, forgetting about it when the car is sold (or when the owner dies).

Books - Stashing currency in the pages of books was common at one time. It may still be. Look through any books found in old homes - especially Bibles.

Crawl spaces - Under a house is a great place to hide things, because even though it is common, it is difficult to get under there and guess where something is buried. Someone I know buried a hundred ounces of silver in the crawl space of his house. If I hadn't known this and he passed away with the stash still there, who knows how long it would be before it was discovered.

Yards - Stashes can be found in yards by looking for low spots in the ground. It is common to level the site after burying valuables, but then when the ground settles there is a slight depression over the buried treasure.

Sheds and garages - Check the rafters and eaves to start with. If the shed is one with a dirt floor or loose cement tiles for a floor, look for buried things as well.

Ponder what people might have buried or otherwise stashed - gold, silver, jewelry, cash, watches, stock certificates, coin collections, etc. Try to get into the mind of the previous occupant of a home and imagine where you might have put these things. That's how you find a secret stash.