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Are there that many hidden treasures out there? If you read the page, Hidden Treasure - Two Examples, which had my own true stories, you probably have come to suspect that they are far more common than most people think. We humans like to hide things.
In fact, since writing that page, I remembered that I also once hid money in a space inside a wall for two years. It was accessed from inside a closet, and the hole was hidden behind a false-wall that slid out above the door. Again I am left to wonder how many years would have passed before discovery if I had died without telling anyone about it. There was $300 or so in there.
Now that I am thinking about, I recall a margarine tub we buried as children, as a sort of "time capsule" full of our little treasures. We tried to dig it up a couple years later, but never did find it. That was over thirty years ago. Under the old willow tree, in case you are wondering. Perhaps someday someone will find our plastic figurines and a few coins from our coin collections.
Perhaps you read the page where I detailed how I hid 100 ounces of silver under my parent's home as a young man. Well, in that same crawl space I found a chest with foreign notes and coins. It had apparently been forgotten by a previous owner of the home. Those two experiences and common sense tell me that crawl spaces might be a good place to search for hidden treasures. Where else?
Sometimes you might suspect that there is a hidden stash of cash or valuables on a property. You may have heard rumors or you just knew well the person who used to live there and has passed on. In that case, look for sagging asphalt. People like to bury things under the edge of sidewalks and driveways. Cement usually stays firm, but the loosened soil will allow asphalt to sag, so dig under there and see what you find.
It used to be that some treasure hunters found valuable old coins by kicking old gas tanks to listen for the rattling of coins in them? How did they get there? Back during the Great Depression people threw coins in their car gas tanks for safekeeping. Tanks back then were easy to remove for later recovery, and gas doesn't hurt coins.
I suspect that almost all the old gas tanks have been kicked and emptied by now, but it does get me to thinking about where else people might put coins. As children, my brothers and I used to throw pennies into a hole in the kitchen floor from time-to-time (but I honestly don't remember why). We never did know where they went, but into the ceiling space in the basement is a likely guess.
Now there might only be a couple dozen pennies there, and this was in the 1970s, so it isn't likely that this hidden treasure is worth much. But what if kids did something like that in the 1920s, with pennies dating back up to twenty years? Those coins would have some value to collectors. It's enough to make you look at the odd spaces in old homes differently.
I mentioned on another pages that hotel visitors tuck money in the bedside bible, and forget to take it out again. Well, hotel owners report that businessmen on out of town trips also take off and hide their wedding rings in hotel rooms. Unfortunately this is probably a prelude to going out to the bar to meet women. Fortunately for those seeking hidden treasures, they sometimes forget about them until they are home. The next time you are in hotel room, notice all the places someone might hide a ring. Look in them. You never know.
Some more of the places people hide valuables and cash:
Abandoned buildings
Above ceiling tiles
In wall spaces
Under floor boards
In heating oil tanks
Under sinks
In old cars
In walls behind electrical outlets
In pump houses
There may be hidden treasures within yards
of you right now. For more on this, see the page:
Buried Treasure - Where To Find
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