S8 E29 - Mysteries of Cache Hunting - Relics Radio show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Relic Radio. Have you ever hunted for a cash,
like a cash of coins or a cash of jewelry?
You ever think about it when you're out there metal detecting.
You know, it's been around the community for a while
talking about hunting for cases. I've never done it, but
I thought about it a lot. You know, here's the thing.
Why would somebody go in the trouble of bearing a

(00:21):
jar coins or a tin of money, or even a
stash of gold? Like why would they do that? I
always think about that. Why would they do that and
then never come back to claim it? Like? How are
we finding those things? Why would you not take it
with you? Why would you not go and look for it?
You know, it's one of the more fascinating corners of
what we do right as metal detectors. It tells us

(00:44):
a lot about human nature, the history. It maybe even
a little bit about ourselves as to why we might
do this. Right. Cashes, in case you aren't familiar with
they're buried stashes are like money or valuables, and they
didn't happen by accident, right, they were intentional. People buried
these things because they didn't trust banks, or maybe they

(01:05):
didn't trust their neighbors, right, stay off my lawn. So
you know, you didn't know if your neighbors were your
friend or foe back in the day, and you just
weren't trusting anybody. And when you don't trust people, you
turn inward. Right, I know that. Back in feudal Japan,
let's say, I know, samurai classes and villages would bury

(01:25):
tons of coins and their treasures because they didn't want
the showgun to show up and take it from them.
They didn't want to display how wealthy they were because
then they'd become targets. Right, if you think back, if
you go back and think about the Great Depression, right,
banks were failing left and right. I mean it was terrible.

(01:48):
You could walk into a bank one day with your savings,
then the next day the doors might be locked forever.
Folks learn quickly that maybe the safest vault wasn't a
bank at all, Maybe it was just a mason jar
that you hit underneath the chicken coop. Others hid money
before going off to war, thinking I'll dig it up
when I get back, and tragically many never did. Illness

(02:11):
accidents simply forgetting the exact spot meant that treasure stayed
in the ground, just waiting waiting for us to come
along and find them hundreds of years later. I know,
my wife tells a story about her father always buried
cans of cash in the backyard and some day we
should go back to her childhood home and look for them.

(02:32):
But in my mind, I'm thinking, why would you not
go unbury those? But I guess you could lose track
if you bury enough of them exactly where they are.
Maybe we'll do that now. I mean, there's countless stories
out there right of these cases turning up by accident.
You know, a farmer in the Midwest plowing his field,
tractor strikes a glass jar and inside there's rolls of

(02:54):
coins wrapped in paper bands left there since the nineteen thirties.
That discovery actually happened and it was funded the man's retirement.
I think there was one in Kentucky. I was reading
the article about tons of gold coins found. It was
pretty amazing. Go look for that. I think there's some
videos out there from some of our local YouTubers in

(03:16):
the metal detecting field that was interviewed by the news
and kind of met it there. So make sure you
go check that out. Sometimes you've heard these stories of
families like renovating their basement, right and tear down a
wall and they find tin cans hidden behind some false
wall or as they demo it. I know that a
lot of people talked about people back in the day
would drop coins inside of hollowed outdoors. So if you're

(03:40):
ever inside of an old abandoned house, check out those
doors with their metal detector to see if there's anything
inside of them. And of course there's more legendary fines, right,
digging a fence posts uncovered coffee cans filled with gold
coins and suddenly he wasn't just digging hols, right, he
was digging into someone else's lost dream, like somebody that

(04:00):
was somebody's treasure, That was somebody's fortune, and why it's
there now for us to go find? I mean, who knows?
Like have you ever have you ever searched for a
hidden cash like is that something that's on your bucket
list or maybe something you've done. There's other stories of
cases that didn't have a happy ending of detectors come
around to find him. You know. Some some some stories

(04:21):
that are like folkal or like those are a farmer bearing
payroll money for before a storm and an or an
outlaws stashing loop between a cottonwood tree. Those are Those
are stories of legends, right, and those stories get passed down,
they get embellished, and sometimes they keep generations searching forever
and ever. I know we have a story here. There's

(04:41):
all kinds of treasure legends. I'm sure there is in yours.
But here in Colorado we have the robbers Roost legend
up by Virginia Dale of you know, these robbers robbing
a stagecoach taken off into the hills, all this money
you know, uh posse on their tail and then they
hide it and then they get killed. That's one of

(05:02):
the stories here. Now you need to go out and
look for it, but happens to be on private property,
and the property owner is very very hesitant letting anybody
on his land. So are there real treasures out there
still buried in places that no one's thought the look? Man?
That's a big question, right, how many cashes are still

(05:23):
out there just waiting? Have most been found? Where would
you look? How would you even start to look? I
know I've read stories and heard other people in our
community talk about. Well, the important part is that they
would want to keep it in sight. So if you're
at an old home site, look out the kitchen window

(05:45):
or the living room window and look for areas that
are marked by a big rock or maybe a tree
that's out of place, or some type of marker, someplace
that people could find their way back to, and look
there out the back door. Maybe who knows. I know
that there's been stories in our treasure hunting club. People

(06:07):
have contacted us said hey, there's a cash out here
buried somewhere, and I'd like your help to come look
for it. Of course, no one's ever found one. I'm
sure my friends have found some cashes. I remember quarter
Order on YouTube found a witch jar one time, which
is a different type of cash, right, so make sure
you go search out that video if you're interested. Let

(06:30):
me ask you something though. If you had to bury
your life savings today, you want to pull it all
out of the bank and just bury it, and it's
your life savings, where would you hide it. It would
have to be clever enough, right, You'd have to pick
a clever spot that no one could stumble across it,
but simple enough that you wouldn't forget where it was,

(06:51):
you know, right now. These days, there's a bunch of
treasure hunts out there. You know Forest Van treasure hunt
of legend. That one's done, but there's plenty of other
treasure hunts going on out there. One very similar to
the Forest Fen treasure hunt just in Posey. So if
you look up justin Posey beyond the map's edge, you
can get involved in another treasure hunt similar to Forest Fen.

(07:15):
Here's another question for you. Do you believe there's still
depressionary of caches in your own town, like in the
town you live in, buried in backyards or along old
fence lines or something. I'd love to hear your stories
and theories about that. Drop me a line, let me
know what you think. You know, cash is more than
just money or treasure, right It's frozen moment of someone's life.

(07:35):
Someone chose to bury that cash for a reason. So
when you find one, you got to think about what
was their fear, their hope, their trust in the earth
to keep it secret safe, their fear, their hope. They
had to have trust in that earth to keep their
secret safe. How did they know it wasn't going to

(07:55):
get destroyed? What steps did they take? What steps would
you take when we stumble across one today, you know
it's not just this great, great happening. Oh my gosh,
I found this cash. You gotta think it's a connection,
a connection across time to the person who walked on
that same ground and trusted that soil to guard their story.

(08:18):
The next time you hear that soft signal in the
dirt or that large iron grunt, remember you might not
just be finding metal when you dig down. You might
be unlocking someone's final, forgotten secret. Thanks for joining me
on this episode of Relics Radio. Until next time, keep
your coil low, their ears sharp, your eyes open, for

(08:41):
history is hiding just beneath our feet. We'll see you
next time.

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S8 E29 - Mysteries of Cache Hunting

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