June 26, 2020 • 15 mins
For a decade, treasure hunters have been scouring the Rocky Mountains to find a chest full of gold and gemstones hidden there by an art dealer named Forrest Fenn. The treasure was finally discovered last month -- but only after many years of controversy. Find out more about the backstory of Fenn's treasure and why it stirred so much dissension in the local press.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Breaking the Dollar.
(00:05):
The podcast that dismantles some of the biggest misconceptions about money.
Presented by Gainesville Coins.
Hello, hello.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Everett Millman and thank you for joining me on Breaking the Dollar.
(00:30):
So as I get caught up on some of these topics I wanted to discuss that got interrupted by
the coronavirus as I'm sure it's happened to basically everybody's routines, one of
the ones that I've had in mind is the story of Forrest Fenn's treasure.
This one is really fascinating and I've been following it for several years because it
(00:52):
has actually gone on for more than a decade and until now there was no resolution to this
really cool treasure hunt.
So let me give you some background on how this whole thing started and now update you
on what the new news is about this.
So Forrest Fenn is an elderly man who is an eccentric art collector.
(01:17):
In fact, I believe he may have been an art dealer.
So this is someone who buys and sells rare art for other people because he is an expert
in antiques and collectibles and all of those related things.
Around 2009 or 2010, so roughly 10 years ago, Forrest Fenn came up with something almost
(01:38):
like a scavenger hunt, more of a treasure hunt, but it did come along with poems that contained
clues about where he had hidden this treasure.
So let's talk about the treasure.
According to Fenn, somewhere around the Rocky Mountains in the American West, he hid a treasure
(02:00):
chest full of gold and gemstones and diamonds, all sorts of cool stuff.
Even the treasure chest itself was an antique collectible that I think I saw it was valued
at $25,000 just for the chest, even if it was empty.
But Fenn claims he put roughly $1 million worth of gold and rare gemstones in this treasure
(02:26):
chest and hid it somewhere.
Now his whole intention of doing this was partly just to generate some excitement and
stir things up, do something fun.
But really it was to encourage people to be more active and healthy and get out and go
enjoy the outdoors.
Very noble stuff, I like the idea.
So with that in mind, he hid it somewhere in not quite the wilderness, but it wasn't
(02:54):
in somebody's backyard, it wasn't in a neighborhood.
And he was very specific,
Fenn was, about the location (02:59):
it was not on private property, it was not in protected land for
a state park, so nobody needed to be looking in those places and encroaching on anybody's
property.
Well, unfortunately the story was not without a bit of controversy, because some of the
(03:20):
treasure hunters did not follow Fenn's advice, they did look on private property and they
dug up burial sites and encroached on government land.
It really was a case of just some people behaving badly because they really wanted that million
dollar treasure.
We can understand that.
(03:41):
Well unfortunately it even got worse, because not only was there the nuisance of all these
treasure hunters ripping up the land as they went, you had some of these treasure seekers
getting into increasingly dangerous situations on their journey to try and find the treasure.
This was another case where if they had listened to the instructions of the hunt, Forrest Fenn
(04:03):
pointed out he was about 70 years old when he hid this treasure, so if a seventy year old
man couldn't get to the spot, then it's not there, right?
And again, unfortunately people did not heed his words and they got themselves into some
precarious situations where they needed to be rescued.
(04:24):
So now the state of New Mexico was using its resources and its workers to go and save
these people who had put themselves in the situation.
Obviously I'm not suggesting that they should have been left there to die or suffer, but
it was frivolous to say the least.
And unfortunately in at least two or three cases that did happen where somebody lost their
(04:46):
life trying to find this treasure.
As you might expect, that did stir up a lot of anger from the media and there were newspaper
editorials in those western states where people were doing this and they were saying
Fenn needs to call off the treasure hunt.
It's causing too many problems, people are dying.
So that is sort of the dark side of it that even with the best intentions, some people
(05:10):
took this too far.
Maybe worst of all, with people getting lost or injured or dying, is that nobody found
the treasure.
So for ten years people were looking pretty avidly.
Anytime the weather permitted, there were always people searching for Fenn's treasure.
And that was actually one of the really cool sides of it, is not only were people being
(05:33):
active and enjoying the outdoors and many of them reported that, that although they didn't
find the treasure, they were really happy that they went and they got to see nature
and they wouldn't have done it otherwise.
But an entire community really sprung up around this.
They had a gathering once a year called Fenn-boree where they would exchange notes about where
(05:54):
they had looked for it, how they were deciphering the poems that Fenn would give them as clues
and they made maps and they distributed maps so that everyone could have a better chance
of finding the treasure.
But even with all of that brain power and manpower combined, after ten years no one had
found it.
Well, that brings us to the recent news that last month, Forrest Fenn confirmed that somebody
(06:21):
discovered his treasure.
Now of course this was reported in the newspapers, but they kept the man's identity anonymous
for pretty obvious reasons that if you told everyone you just found a million dollars
in treasure, they might come after you, right?
And that is also one of the unfortunate side effects of this really cool, really awesome
treasure hunt is that some people rather than looking for the treasure just looked up Forrest
(06:47):
Fenn's address and went and robbed his home.
He was burglarized on more than one occasion because people figured if he has this treasure
to hide somewhere, well then maybe he has more treasure at home.
As I pointed out, this story definitely has its own dose of controversy and sort of a
dark side, but alas, now it has been discovered.
(07:10):
So I saw this reported in a couple different newspapers in, you know, Arizona, New Mexico,
but what really irked me is that we didn't get to see a picture of the treasure.
Nobody shared a photo of it.
The reports did give an updated estimate of the value where they said it could be worth
as much as five million dollars now that it's 10 years later, but we want to see it, right?
(07:35):
I want to see what type of gold and gemstones and old relics. I want to know.
So that did bother me to no end that they didn't include any photographs of it.
I do think I have one picture of supposedly the treasure before Fenn hid it because as
(07:56):
I said, I've been following the story for a few years and I've written a couple of blog
posts on it when different developments would happen, but that's the only picture we have
and I for one am not satisfied with that.
I want to know what the Forrest Fenn treasure looks like.
So if anybody wants to email Forrest Fenn and ask him, that would be much appreciated.
(08:18):
And so that's basically where we're at with the Forrest Fenn story.
He hasn't said if he's going to do it again, but it was just something for fun and it raises
a sort of interesting tangent that I think about sometimes about buried treasure.
So as I often speak about when I'm talking about what's driving the gold price and how
(08:40):
the government is printing money, this problem of government control of the money supply
and how it manages it has been recognized for quite some time.
Ever since we went off the gold standard in 1971, in fact, different economists have
been studying this problem in hypothetical.
What happens if money loses its value if it is not backed by something?
(09:04):
How long can, for lack of a better phrase, how long can we keep this charade going?
And one of the proposals to combat this that really struck me and I've always remembered
is someone proposed that the government could print all the money it wanted, but then go
and bury that money in caves or mountains or mines somewhere where people would have
(09:28):
to work to go get the money.
They would have to go and dig up the dollar bills that were buried in a cave somewhere.
And as comical as that sounds to us, that's not how money works.
That's not how we get money.
The underlying principle actually does make a lot of sense that if there is work that
(09:49):
has to be done in order to get the money, well then obviously that money has value.
It has value equal to that work
it took to get it.
And you see this principle is underlying Bitcoin, that Bitcoins don't just come out of thin
air.
There's actual work and computer calculations that have to be done.
So there is a price or a value on that electricity being used and on that work being done and
(10:15):
time being spent.
So that yes, that money has value.
And so the whole Forrest Fenn story of burying treasure brought back up that idea of, hmm,
if the government ever got into a really bad position where nobody wanted their money,
you know, it was hyperinflation Weimar Germany where money is worthless.
(10:36):
Maybe this idea of putting everyone on a treasure hunt could actually revive the value of the
currency.
Now unfortunately, that would be total chaos.
I'm sure people would be fighting in the streets over control of the mountain or the
cave wherever the money was buried.
So as we've discussed before about the unlikelihood of a gold standard coming back, sure, we're
(11:00):
not going to see the government burying dollar bills and telling everyone to go out and find
them.
As a thought exercise, it does reveal something, a true insight about what gives money value
and how our current financial system is gradually and increasingly faster getting further and
further away from that.
So just some interesting food for thought there that wraps up this episode.
(11:24):
So I will move on to our mailbag.
This question comes from DD or DiDi.
It doesn't give a location and DD asks, I have been trading a Robinhood account recently.
Do you think stocks are going to an all time high?
Well, congratulations, I will say, very brave to have jumped on the Robinhood bandwagon
(11:47):
here.
And not that there's anything particularly risky about it.
I just think it's always helpful when you have a reputable intermediary when you're
making investments in things that aren't a tangible asset like gold or real estate.
Those things you can generally figure them out with your own knowledge, stocks and other
investments are obviously a little bit different.
(12:09):
But nonetheless, good for you trading on Robinhood.
Okay.
Oh, and you want to know if stocks are going to an all time high.
Of course, we do have to understand that the stock market and really all markets are forward-looking
mechanisms.
They have to price in expectations and forecasts about the future.
So stock prices don't just reflect how strong a company is right now today or even how strong
(12:35):
the economy is right now today.
That is certainly not the case.
They're always going to be taking into account what investors and those companies expect
to be the case, you know, six months from now, a year from now.
And so as we've seen with this huge stock market rally over the past couple of months,
everyone is expecting that the rebound and recovery from the pandemic and all the shutdowns
(13:00):
is going to be huge to the upside.
In other words, the return to a normal economy will be such a big come up because we fell
so far.
Economic activity went to basically zero when everything was closed.
Okay.
I think that argument makes some sense.
So my answer would be yes.
I do expect stocks to hit an all time high before this year is over with the caveat that
(13:26):
who knows how long it stays at those all time highs and who knows how we're going to get
there, like how bumpy the ride is going to be, how much volatility on the way to the
all time highs.
But absolutely.
I think that's the base scenario right now, if you look the NASDAQ, which is sort of the
technology stock index in the United States, the NASDAQ has already made new all time highs
(13:52):
21 times this year in 2020 and we're only halfway through the year.
So to some degree, your question is already being answered on its own,
Didi, that stocks are at or near all time highs already.
So as I said, we don't know how long they will remain at those highs before something
comes and interferes or expectations change.
(14:16):
But for the time being, yes, it does look like that is the direction that the market
is leaning.
So that wraps up this episode.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening.
We appreciate everybody out there in the audience.
It's great that you enjoy the show and you keep listening.
Be sure to check out our next episode where I'll be discussing how the COVID pandemic
(14:37):
is changing things for banks.
It'll be interesting.
Thanks for watching!
This is Breaking the Dollar.
(00:05):
The podcast that dismantles some of the biggest misconceptions about money.
Presented by Gainesville Coins.
Hello, hello.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Everett Millman and thank you for joining me on Breaking the Dollar.
(00:30):
So as I get caught up on some of these topics I wanted to discuss that got interrupted by
the coronavirus as I'm sure it's happened to basically everybody's routines, one of
the ones that I've had in mind is the story of Forrest Fenn's treasure.
This one is really fascinating and I've been following it for several years because it
(00:52):
has actually gone on for more than a decade and until now there was no resolution to this
really cool treasure hunt.
So let me give you some background on how this whole thing started and now update you
on what the new news is about this.
So Forrest Fenn is an elderly man who is an eccentric art collector.
(01:17):
In fact, I believe he may have been an art dealer.
So this is someone who buys and sells rare art for other people because he is an expert
in antiques and collectibles and all of those related things.
Around 2009 or 2010, so roughly 10 years ago, Forrest Fenn came up with something almost
(01:38):
like a scavenger hunt, more of a treasure hunt, but it did come along with poems that contained
clues about where he had hidden this treasure.
So let's talk about the treasure.
According to Fenn, somewhere around the Rocky Mountains in the American West, he hid a treasure
(02:00):
chest full of gold and gemstones and diamonds, all sorts of cool stuff.
Even the treasure chest itself was an antique collectible that I think I saw it was valued
at $25,000 just for the chest, even if it was empty.
But Fenn claims he put roughly $1 million worth of gold and rare gemstones in this treasure
(02:26):
chest and hid it somewhere.
Now his whole intention of doing this was partly just to generate some excitement and
stir things up, do something fun.
But really it was to encourage people to be more active and healthy and get out and go
enjoy the outdoors.
Very noble stuff, I like the idea.
So with that in mind, he hid it somewhere in not quite the wilderness, but it wasn't
(02:54):
in somebody's backyard, it wasn't in a neighborhood.
And he was very specific,
Fenn was, about the location (02:59):
it was not on private property, it was not in protected land for
a state park, so nobody needed to be looking in those places and encroaching on anybody's
property.
Well, unfortunately the story was not without a bit of controversy, because some of the
(03:20):
treasure hunters did not follow Fenn's advice, they did look on private property and they
dug up burial sites and encroached on government land.
It really was a case of just some people behaving badly because they really wanted that million
dollar treasure.
We can understand that.
(03:41):
Well unfortunately it even got worse, because not only was there the nuisance of all these
treasure hunters ripping up the land as they went, you had some of these treasure seekers
getting into increasingly dangerous situations on their journey to try and find the treasure.
This was another case where if they had listened to the instructions of the hunt, Forrest Fenn
(04:03):
pointed out he was about 70 years old when he hid this treasure, so if a seventy year old
man couldn't get to the spot, then it's not there, right?
And again, unfortunately people did not heed his words and they got themselves into some
precarious situations where they needed to be rescued.
(04:24):
So now the state of New Mexico was using its resources and its workers to go and save
these people who had put themselves in the situation.
Obviously I'm not suggesting that they should have been left there to die or suffer, but
it was frivolous to say the least.
And unfortunately in at least two or three cases that did happen where somebody lost their
(04:46):
life trying to find this treasure.
As you might expect, that did stir up a lot of anger from the media and there were newspaper
editorials in those western states where people were doing this and they were saying
Fenn needs to call off the treasure hunt.
It's causing too many problems, people are dying.
So that is sort of the dark side of it that even with the best intentions, some people
(05:10):
took this too far.
Maybe worst of all, with people getting lost or injured or dying, is that nobody found
the treasure.
So for ten years people were looking pretty avidly.
Anytime the weather permitted, there were always people searching for Fenn's treasure.
And that was actually one of the really cool sides of it, is not only were people being
(05:33):
active and enjoying the outdoors and many of them reported that, that although they didn't
find the treasure, they were really happy that they went and they got to see nature
and they wouldn't have done it otherwise.
But an entire community really sprung up around this.
They had a gathering once a year called Fenn-boree where they would exchange notes about where
(05:54):
they had looked for it, how they were deciphering the poems that Fenn would give them as clues
and they made maps and they distributed maps so that everyone could have a better chance
of finding the treasure.
But even with all of that brain power and manpower combined, after ten years no one had
found it.
Well, that brings us to the recent news that last month, Forrest Fenn confirmed that somebody
(06:21):
discovered his treasure.
Now of course this was reported in the newspapers, but they kept the man's identity anonymous
for pretty obvious reasons that if you told everyone you just found a million dollars
in treasure, they might come after you, right?
And that is also one of the unfortunate side effects of this really cool, really awesome
treasure hunt is that some people rather than looking for the treasure just looked up Forrest
(06:47):
Fenn's address and went and robbed his home.
He was burglarized on more than one occasion because people figured if he has this treasure
to hide somewhere, well then maybe he has more treasure at home.
As I pointed out, this story definitely has its own dose of controversy and sort of a
dark side, but alas, now it has been discovered.
(07:10):
So I saw this reported in a couple different newspapers in, you know, Arizona, New Mexico,
but what really irked me is that we didn't get to see a picture of the treasure.
Nobody shared a photo of it.
The reports did give an updated estimate of the value where they said it could be worth
as much as five million dollars now that it's 10 years later, but we want to see it, right?
(07:35):
I want to see what type of gold and gemstones and old relics. I want to know.
So that did bother me to no end that they didn't include any photographs of it.
I do think I have one picture of supposedly the treasure before Fenn hid it because as
(07:56):
I said, I've been following the story for a few years and I've written a couple of blog
posts on it when different developments would happen, but that's the only picture we have
and I for one am not satisfied with that.
I want to know what the Forrest Fenn treasure looks like.
So if anybody wants to email Forrest Fenn and ask him, that would be much appreciated.
(08:18):
And so that's basically where we're at with the Forrest Fenn story.
He hasn't said if he's going to do it again, but it was just something for fun and it raises
a sort of interesting tangent that I think about sometimes about buried treasure.
So as I often speak about when I'm talking about what's driving the gold price and how
(08:40):
the government is printing money, this problem of government control of the money supply
and how it manages it has been recognized for quite some time.
Ever since we went off the gold standard in 1971, in fact, different economists have
been studying this problem in hypothetical.
What happens if money loses its value if it is not backed by something?
(09:04):
How long can, for lack of a better phrase, how long can we keep this charade going?
And one of the proposals to combat this that really struck me and I've always remembered
is someone proposed that the government could print all the money it wanted, but then go
and bury that money in caves or mountains or mines somewhere where people would have
(09:28):
to work to go get the money.
They would have to go and dig up the dollar bills that were buried in a cave somewhere.
And as comical as that sounds to us, that's not how money works.
That's not how we get money.
The underlying principle actually does make a lot of sense that if there is work that
(09:49):
has to be done in order to get the money, well then obviously that money has value.
It has value equal to that work
it took to get it.
And you see this principle is underlying Bitcoin, that Bitcoins don't just come out of thin
air.
There's actual work and computer calculations that have to be done.
So there is a price or a value on that electricity being used and on that work being done and
(10:15):
time being spent.
So that yes, that money has value.
And so the whole Forrest Fenn story of burying treasure brought back up that idea of, hmm,
if the government ever got into a really bad position where nobody wanted their money,
you know, it was hyperinflation Weimar Germany where money is worthless.
(10:36):
Maybe this idea of putting everyone on a treasure hunt could actually revive the value of the
currency.
Now unfortunately, that would be total chaos.
I'm sure people would be fighting in the streets over control of the mountain or the
cave wherever the money was buried.
So as we've discussed before about the unlikelihood of a gold standard coming back, sure, we're
(11:00):
not going to see the government burying dollar bills and telling everyone to go out and find
them.
As a thought exercise, it does reveal something, a true insight about what gives money value
and how our current financial system is gradually and increasingly faster getting further and
further away from that.
So just some interesting food for thought there that wraps up this episode.
(11:24):
So I will move on to our mailbag.
This question comes from DD or DiDi.
It doesn't give a location and DD asks, I have been trading a Robinhood account recently.
Do you think stocks are going to an all time high?
Well, congratulations, I will say, very brave to have jumped on the Robinhood bandwagon
(11:47):
here.
And not that there's anything particularly risky about it.
I just think it's always helpful when you have a reputable intermediary when you're
making investments in things that aren't a tangible asset like gold or real estate.
Those things you can generally figure them out with your own knowledge, stocks and other
investments are obviously a little bit different.
(12:09):
But nonetheless, good for you trading on Robinhood.
Okay.
Oh, and you want to know if stocks are going to an all time high.
Of course, we do have to understand that the stock market and really all markets are forward-looking
mechanisms.
They have to price in expectations and forecasts about the future.
So stock prices don't just reflect how strong a company is right now today or even how strong
(12:35):
the economy is right now today.
That is certainly not the case.
They're always going to be taking into account what investors and those companies expect
to be the case, you know, six months from now, a year from now.
And so as we've seen with this huge stock market rally over the past couple of months,
everyone is expecting that the rebound and recovery from the pandemic and all the shutdowns
(13:00):
is going to be huge to the upside.
In other words, the return to a normal economy will be such a big come up because we fell
so far.
Economic activity went to basically zero when everything was closed.
Okay.
I think that argument makes some sense.
So my answer would be yes.
I do expect stocks to hit an all time high before this year is over with the caveat that
(13:26):
who knows how long it stays at those all time highs and who knows how we're going to get
there, like how bumpy the ride is going to be, how much volatility on the way to the
all time highs.
But absolutely.
I think that's the base scenario right now, if you look the NASDAQ, which is sort of the
technology stock index in the United States, the NASDAQ has already made new all time highs
(13:52):
21 times this year in 2020 and we're only halfway through the year.
So to some degree, your question is already being answered on its own,
Didi, that stocks are at or near all time highs already.
So as I said, we don't know how long they will remain at those highs before something
comes and interferes or expectations change.
(14:16):
But for the time being, yes, it does look like that is the direction that the market
is leaning.
So that wraps up this episode.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening.
We appreciate everybody out there in the audience.
It's great that you enjoy the show and you keep listening.
Be sure to check out our next episode where I'll be discussing how the COVID pandemic
(14:37):
is changing things for banks.
It'll be interesting.
Thanks for watching!
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