5 ms·

Has he ever confirmed whether the treasure is still at the location? What if someone found it long ago, not knowing that it was part of a scavenger hunt, and d

by iplaw 10y ago

Has he ever confirmed whether the treasure is still at the location? What if someone found it long ago, not knowing that it was part of a scavenger hunt, and decided to hide their discovery?

ehsankia 10y ago
I'm not sure how old this information is, but I remember him confirming it still is and also saying that someone once made it within 200 feet of it (I'm not sure how he knows that, I wonder if he has cameras setup there?). Actually, looking at the wikipedia page [1] for it, it seems to be from August 20, 2016. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure
- onion2k 10y ago
  I'm not sure how he knows that, I wonder if he has cameras setup there? If he does then that's how to find the treasure. Detecting electronics is a lot easy than detecting a metal box.
  - giarc 10y ago
    Or if he visits the site... just follow him.
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      If that's the way to find it then it must be a tshirt reading "I found the treasure of melee island"
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        The forest on Melee is fixed; you can find the treasure by memorizing its location or by following the map, but there is no guide who will lead you to it. You find the sword master in the same forest by following a guide (or, again, by memorizing her location). This was an interesting choice, since the hell caverns in the same game are randomized and it's impossible to get through them without the guide.
    - iaw 10y ago
      You're more likely to end up having a ton of wonderful hikes through the park system. He doesn't just go out there to check his gold ;)
- ghaff 10y ago
  Assuming the statement is true (and the treasure is real), presumably he visited the area and saw some sort of evidence of people having been digging or otherwise poking around. If that were the case, there's an implication that it's probably relatively accessible to where he lives.
  - iaw 10y ago
    He can get to the region, with weights, and home within an afternoon
- mirimir 10y ago
  Or maybe he has access to high-resolution satellite imagery. If so, maybe someone could figure out what area he was checking.
- notatoad 10y ago
  >someone once made it within 200 feet of it (I'm not sure how he knows that) There's at least one forum [1] where people post reports of their search. He's probably just keeping an eye on where people say they've gone looking for it. [1]http://www.chasechat.com/ http://www.chasechat.com/
  - ghaff 10y ago
    It also occurs to me that if you do get to the general location by paddling, as many have speculated, if someone posted or emailed him with the correct put-in spot he would know that they would have passed by the treasure.
onion2k 10y ago
What if someone found it long ago, not knowing that it was part of a scavenger hunt, and decided to hide their discovery? Only one of the treasure hunters will find the treasure (or possibly no one will). If people are in it for a profit rather than for the "thrill of the chase" and to enjoy the mountains then they've only themselves to blame when they come away empty-handed. If the treasure is no longer there, for the majority of treasure hunters nothing has changed.
elif 10y ago
If certainty is a prerequisite for you, you'll never find treasure because you'll never look.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
I can't imagine ever telling someone I found it. I don't know the exact tax implications but I imagine it would be a lot like gambling which can be up to a 40% taxation rate. I would quietly take the gold, turn it into cash, and slowly launder the cash and never report it. Heck, I would just pay cash for everything and would probably just spent it naturally over my lifetime like this without bothering to launder. As long as I avoided the kinds of purchases that raise eyebrows, the IRS would never know. My normal salary would just go into savings/investments. I imagine most people would do this, at least the kinds of people who would hunt $1m lockboxes. As a side note, I wonder if you can DIY ground penetrating radar light enough to be carried on a drone. Imagine a few drones shooting electromagnetic waves at the ground and waiting for a reflective ping from a metal box. You could probably cover a lot of ground with a few drones running everyday for a few days. If you can figure out how to filter out the false positives, you can probably just find this thing via radar. I imagine an old man doesn't have the ability to dig very deep and this thing might only be a couple feet underground, so within some reasonable sensing specs. edit after some googling: Working ground penetrating radar drone for $500 here. Heck, its even FCC legal! Its a IG42-SB4 robot which can drive for 3 hours on stock batteries, so maybe double that battery pack and you get 6 hours of non-stop sensing. Just a few of these should cover every human walkable path in a matter of days, perhaps a couple weeks at most (guesstimate). https://hackaday.io/project/4440-open-ground-penetrating-radar https://hackaday.io/project/4440-open-ground-penetrating-rad... Looks like he uses this visualization library from the US Navy. I'm no expert but I imagine something like this would be able to show a treasure chest-like box very easily once you have all the data. Cubes don't exist in nature so once you see something cube-like in your data, go on a hike. If you're clever you can have your drones pipe their data via 4G every five minutes or so, shoot it to your desktop, and look at this data in almost realtime. Or if you're especially clever use CV to look for square-like shapes in the data and to alert you when they pop-up. Now you can tell that drone to go back to double-check and to scan from different angles. If it really, really looks like a cube from different angles, then go on a hike and enjoy your million bucks. http://pfmabe.software/ http://pfmabe.software/
- pimlottc 10y ago
  I imagine there are tens of thousands of buried metal objects in the Rockies left over from the old mining days...

by iplaw 10y ago

Has he ever confirmed whether the treasure is still at the location? What if someone found it long ago, not knowing that it was part of a scavenger hunt, and decided to hide their discovery?

ehsankia 10y ago

I'm not sure how old this information is, but I remember him confirming it still is and also saying that someone once made it within 200 feet of it (I'm not sure how he knows that, I wonder if he has cameras setup there?). Actually, looking at the wikipedia page [1] for it, it seems to be from August 20, 2016. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure

onion2k 10y ago
I'm not sure how he knows that, I wonder if he has cameras setup there? If he does then that's how to find the treasure. Detecting electronics is a lot easy than detecting a metal box.
- giarc 10y ago
  Or if he visits the site... just follow him.
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    If that's the way to find it then it must be a tshirt reading "I found the treasure of melee island"
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      The forest on Melee is fixed; you can find the treasure by memorizing its location or by following the map, but there is no guide who will lead you to it. You find the sword master in the same forest by following a guide (or, again, by memorizing her location). This was an interesting choice, since the hell caverns in the same game are randomized and it's impossible to get through them without the guide.
  - iaw 10y ago
    You're more likely to end up having a ton of wonderful hikes through the park system. He doesn't just go out there to check his gold ;)
ghaff 10y ago
Assuming the statement is true (and the treasure is real), presumably he visited the area and saw some sort of evidence of people having been digging or otherwise poking around. If that were the case, there's an implication that it's probably relatively accessible to where he lives.
- iaw 10y ago
  He can get to the region, with weights, and home within an afternoon
mirimir 10y ago
Or maybe he has access to high-resolution satellite imagery. If so, maybe someone could figure out what area he was checking.
notatoad 10y ago
>someone once made it within 200 feet of it (I'm not sure how he knows that) There's at least one forum [1] where people post reports of their search. He's probably just keeping an eye on where people say they've gone looking for it. [1]http://www.chasechat.com/ http://www.chasechat.com/
- ghaff 10y ago
  It also occurs to me that if you do get to the general location by paddling, as many have speculated, if someone posted or emailed him with the correct put-in spot he would know that they would have passed by the treasure.

onion2k 10y ago

What if someone found it long ago, not knowing that it was part of a scavenger hunt, and decided to hide their discovery? Only one of the treasure hunters will find the treasure (or possibly no one will). If people are in it for a profit rather than for the "thrill of the chase" and to enjoy the mountains then they've only themselves to blame when they come away empty-handed. If the treasure is no longer there, for the majority of treasure hunters nothing has changed.

elif 10y ago

If certainty is a prerequisite for you, you'll never find treasure because you'll never look.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

I can't imagine ever telling someone I found it. I don't know the exact tax implications but I imagine it would be a lot like gambling which can be up to a 40% taxation rate. I would quietly take the gold, turn it into cash, and slowly launder the cash and never report it. Heck, I would just pay cash for everything and would probably just spent it naturally over my lifetime like this without bothering to launder. As long as I avoided the kinds of purchases that raise eyebrows, the IRS would never know. My normal salary would just go into savings/investments. I imagine most people would do this, at least the kinds of people who would hunt $1m lockboxes. As a side note, I wonder if you can DIY ground penetrating radar light enough to be carried on a drone. Imagine a few drones shooting electromagnetic waves at the ground and waiting for a reflective ping from a metal box. You could probably cover a lot of ground with a few drones running everyday for a few days. If you can figure out how to filter out the false positives, you can probably just find this thing via radar. I imagine an old man doesn't have the ability to dig very deep and this thing might only be a couple feet underground, so within some reasonable sensing specs. edit after some googling: Working ground penetrating radar drone for $500 here. Heck, its even FCC legal! Its a IG42-SB4 robot which can drive for 3 hours on stock batteries, so maybe double that battery pack and you get 6 hours of non-stop sensing. Just a few of these should cover every human walkable path in a matter of days, perhaps a couple weeks at most (guesstimate). https://hackaday.io/project/4440-open-ground-penetrating-radar https://hackaday.io/project/4440-open-ground-penetrating-rad... Looks like he uses this visualization library from the US Navy. I'm no expert but I imagine something like this would be able to show a treasure chest-like box very easily once you have all the data. Cubes don't exist in nature so once you see something cube-like in your data, go on a hike. If you're clever you can have your drones pipe their data via 4G every five minutes or so, shoot it to your desktop, and look at this data in almost realtime. Or if you're especially clever use CV to look for square-like shapes in the data and to alert you when they pop-up. Now you can tell that drone to go back to double-check and to scan from different angles. If it really, really looks like a cube from different angles, then go on a hike and enjoy your million bucks. http://pfmabe.software/ http://pfmabe.software/

pimlottc 10y ago
I imagine there are tens of thousands of buried metal objects in the Rockies left over from the old mining days...