6 ms·

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn mak

Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it? Who owns the land it is on? If it's not Fenn's land you might have a problem with the owner, be it a private or public entity. If you were to get pulled over with that chest in the car and the police discovered it I think the chances of confiscation are high. Probably finding it would only be the first of many problems.

francisofascii 8y ago
> How do you claim title to it It would certainly be easier if Fenn is still alive. The last line of the poem says...If you are brave and in the wood, I give you title to the gold.
almost_usual 8y ago
Vehicle could mean anything, there are plenty of trails a heavily modded Jeep or Off Road vehicle can do but not a car.
analogmemory 8y ago
I for sure would not tell anyone about it.
- piokuc 8y ago
  And let the other people spend their time in fruitless search forever? Not very nice.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - make3 8y ago
    it's that or get harassed/sued/etc. they have to know this is a possibility, and they're responsible adults
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    That's an argument you ought to bring up to Mr. Fenn - since it appears that an eternal search was more or less what he was going for: > He has also affirmed that hiding the treasure in the first place was largely about encouraging families to enjoy the outdoors. “I wanted to give the kids something to do,” he said. “They spend too much time in the game room or playing with their little hand-held texting machines. I hope parents will take their children camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. I hope they will fish, look for fossils, turn rotten logs over to see what’s under them, and look for my treasure.”
- sametmax 8y ago
  If you intend to keep it "as is", it's not a problem. But you would need to if you want it for it's moneytary value. Even selling in piece by piece on a black market, which is quite hard to do, will require you to advertise it. However my guess is that whoever is smart enough to find it is smart enough to solve this problem as well.
  - moftz 8y ago
    Contact a lawyer that normally deals with lotto winners to help setup the right entities (probably an LLC) to own the treasure. This protects you incase someone decides to sue you. Depending on the state, you can claim someone else as a nominee manager of the LLC so your name stays off anything public. You'll still have to pay taxes on the find and then taxes on any capital gains you get from selling treasure. It might even be better to hold onto the treasure and sell off bits as needed instead of trying to flip the whole thing. I know capital gains taxes favor long term investments although he price of gold might fluctuate enough for you to technically lose money (meaning no taxes on the sale). There are a whole host of scenarios that can liquidate your treasure fast or slow, cheap or expensive but it all depends on your state and the market.
patio11 8y ago
It's abandoned property, where the only person with a colorable claim obviously, publicly, notoriously, and intentionally relinquished it. It will depend a little bit on the laws of the state where it is found, but in general, if you find it, it is yours. When you attempt to sell bits of it, dealers in e.g. gold coins might ask you the provenance, and then you say "It was the Fenn horde", and you probably show the photo you took on your camera phone because you're presumably smart enough to do that, and that's the end of that conundrum.
- markbnj 8y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, however I know that anything of value like this that is found on public land can have some complications, and if the land is private that's another whole ball of wax. If it is Fenn's land and he's living still, no problem obviously. If it's not his land and his other statements are true then the landowner doesn't know it's there.
walrus01 8y ago
1) Mark the location by GPS coordinates, write it down in a few safe places, get back to civilization and make a plan 2) Hike out the hoard in several batches 3) If you are a particularly paranoid sort of person, unless the coins are worth significantly more by their rarity value, buy a $2000 furnace and crucible and melt them down into bars. Sell the bars at a slight loss below the value of 99.999% purity.
- Phlarp 8y ago
  This is not how physical gold works. My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later. I assume freshly mined gold has to go through some type of formal lab validation / certification for purity that puts it into this identification scheme. I expect nobody will touch your homebrew gold bars lacking this identification, even at a steep discount, worse still for you, these unofficial gold bars are even easier to track and trace due to lacking official serial numbers and certification. All of this isn't to say you couldn't "find a way" to get spendable money out of finding this stash, more so a question of staying on the right side of money laundering and taxation laws while doing so.
  - syncopated 8y ago
    Become a jeweler. Problem solved.
  - nylonstrung 8y ago
    You could melt it down into rudimentary jewelry and then perhaps sell that to gold buyers, who don't have to report <$10K transactions to the IRS
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Transactions above $600 are reported to the IRS on form 1099 MISC. You're thinking of the bank account deposit reporting threshold.
tdb7893 8y ago
I would probably immediately contact a lawyer if I found it
TallGuyShort 8y ago
Packing at least that much weight out a considerable distance of wilderness, knowing what land you're looking on and being able to contact the land owner, and having appropriate documentation in the event that you're stopped by police are essentially solved problems for anyone who hunts in the Rockies. I would think this is worth any additional inconvenience considering it's for a millionaire's buried treasure instead of a year's supply of an acquired taste in meat.
drzaiusapelord 8y ago
Also, security. If you were a local you might think of beating up the tired guy coming out of the woods with a big heavy box. You'd have to have other people there to provide security at the least.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Emulate the 'Saddle Ridge Hoard' couple. They were smart about it when they found those 8 cans in Gold Country. They picked out a firm of coin experts (Kagin's) to represent them, and to stay anonymous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_Ridge_Hoard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_Ridge_Hoard
- markbnj 8y ago
  Wasn't that hoard located on their own property? I think that simplifies the provenance issue significantly.
  - 8bitsrule 8y ago
    It was on their property ... they said. But look at the story closely and it was very closely checked against many possibilities. SFGate ran a great article on that in 2014: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Bart-Jesse-James-Who-hid-10-million-5279157.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Bart-Jesse-James-W...

francisofascii 8y ago

> How do you claim title to it It would certainly be easier if Fenn is still alive. The last line of the poem says...If you are brave and in the wood, I give you title to the gold.

almost_usual 8y ago

Vehicle could mean anything, there are plenty of trails a heavily modded Jeep or Off Road vehicle can do but not a car.

analogmemory 8y ago

I for sure would not tell anyone about it.

piokuc 8y ago
And let the other people spend their time in fruitless search forever? Not very nice.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- make3 8y ago
  it's that or get harassed/sued/etc. they have to know this is a possibility, and they're responsible adults
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  That's an argument you ought to bring up to Mr. Fenn - since it appears that an eternal search was more or less what he was going for: > He has also affirmed that hiding the treasure in the first place was largely about encouraging families to enjoy the outdoors. “I wanted to give the kids something to do,” he said. “They spend too much time in the game room or playing with their little hand-held texting machines. I hope parents will take their children camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. I hope they will fish, look for fossils, turn rotten logs over to see what’s under them, and look for my treasure.”
sametmax 8y ago
If you intend to keep it "as is", it's not a problem. But you would need to if you want it for it's moneytary value. Even selling in piece by piece on a black market, which is quite hard to do, will require you to advertise it. However my guess is that whoever is smart enough to find it is smart enough to solve this problem as well.
- moftz 8y ago
  Contact a lawyer that normally deals with lotto winners to help setup the right entities (probably an LLC) to own the treasure. This protects you incase someone decides to sue you. Depending on the state, you can claim someone else as a nominee manager of the LLC so your name stays off anything public. You'll still have to pay taxes on the find and then taxes on any capital gains you get from selling treasure. It might even be better to hold onto the treasure and sell off bits as needed instead of trying to flip the whole thing. I know capital gains taxes favor long term investments although he price of gold might fluctuate enough for you to technically lose money (meaning no taxes on the sale). There are a whole host of scenarios that can liquidate your treasure fast or slow, cheap or expensive but it all depends on your state and the market.

patio11 8y ago

It's abandoned property, where the only person with a colorable claim obviously, publicly, notoriously, and intentionally relinquished it. It will depend a little bit on the laws of the state where it is found, but in general, if you find it, it is yours. When you attempt to sell bits of it, dealers in e.g. gold coins might ask you the provenance, and then you say "It was the Fenn horde", and you probably show the photo you took on your camera phone because you're presumably smart enough to do that, and that's the end of that conundrum.

markbnj 8y ago
I'm not a lawyer, however I know that anything of value like this that is found on public land can have some complications, and if the land is private that's another whole ball of wax. If it is Fenn's land and he's living still, no problem obviously. If it's not his land and his other statements are true then the landowner doesn't know it's there.

walrus01 8y ago

1) Mark the location by GPS coordinates, write it down in a few safe places, get back to civilization and make a plan 2) Hike out the hoard in several batches 3) If you are a particularly paranoid sort of person, unless the coins are worth significantly more by their rarity value, buy a $2000 furnace and crucible and melt them down into bars. Sell the bars at a slight loss below the value of 99.999% purity.

Phlarp 8y ago
This is not how physical gold works. My understanding is that it's tightly regulated with unique identifiers for all ingots, bars, etc and the ownership of each being recorded so there is an audit trail if a diluted bar or ingot is found later. I assume freshly mined gold has to go through some type of formal lab validation / certification for purity that puts it into this identification scheme. I expect nobody will touch your homebrew gold bars lacking this identification, even at a steep discount, worse still for you, these unofficial gold bars are even easier to track and trace due to lacking official serial numbers and certification. All of this isn't to say you couldn't "find a way" to get spendable money out of finding this stash, more so a question of staying on the right side of money laundering and taxation laws while doing so.
- syncopated 8y ago
  Become a jeweler. Problem solved.
- nylonstrung 8y ago
  You could melt it down into rudimentary jewelry and then perhaps sell that to gold buyers, who don't have to report <$10K transactions to the IRS
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Transactions above $600 are reported to the IRS on form 1099 MISC. You're thinking of the bank account deposit reporting threshold.

tdb7893 8y ago

I would probably immediately contact a lawyer if I found it

TallGuyShort 8y ago

Packing at least that much weight out a considerable distance of wilderness, knowing what land you're looking on and being able to contact the land owner, and having appropriate documentation in the event that you're stopped by police are essentially solved problems for anyone who hunts in the Rockies. I would think this is worth any additional inconvenience considering it's for a millionaire's buried treasure instead of a year's supply of an acquired taste in meat.

drzaiusapelord 8y ago

Also, security. If you were a local you might think of beating up the tired guy coming out of the woods with a big heavy box. You'd have to have other people there to provide security at the least.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Emulate the 'Saddle Ridge Hoard' couple. They were smart about it when they found those 8 cans in Gold Country. They picked out a firm of coin experts (Kagin's) to represent them, and to stay anonymous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_Ridge_Hoard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_Ridge_Hoard

markbnj 8y ago
Wasn't that hoard located on their own property? I think that simplifies the provenance issue significantly.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  It was on their property ... they said. But look at the story closely and it was very closely checked against many possibilities. SFGate ran a great article on that in 2014: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Bart-Jesse-James-Who-hid-10-million-5279157.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Bart-Jesse-James-W...