Cache In The Basement

By Chris Dryden

We've all heard stories of buried money. Some have merit and some don't. Every time I talk to people about this great hobby there is always someone who comes up to me and says, "I know where there is this spot that an old man used to live." I'm sure you've heard the same sort of stories I have. But how many of us actually act on them? All stories are worth some investigation. To give a good example of what I mean, I recently bought a piece of property. A few weeks later a person told me a story about one of the former owners. He said that the person that used to live there was somewhat of a recluse and that people said that he used to bury his money. I asked him why people thought he had buried his money. He told me that he was a person that kept to himself and always looked like he didn't have a dime to his name. He never seemed to spend any of his money and was never known to have a checkbook or a bank account, but he was always known to have money. This information was enough to get me interested so I began talking to some of his relatives to find out more. When I felt there was enough to this story I made plans to search the property.

It was a very hot day but it didn't seem to matter much at the time. Today was the day when all my research was going to pay off, I hoped. I got out my Tesoro ( Silver Sabre UMax ) and began my search in the back yard. I went to all the usual spots that I have heard were popular places for hiding money. But after finding only one Indian Head and a handful of junk I was ready to move my search inside. I was disappointed that most of the basement floor was covered with concrete. After searching for several minutes I noticed that there was a room in the center of the basement. I was intentionly made to be hard to find. The walls of the room were made up of vertical boards that ran from floor to ceiling. The door itself had blind hinges and was almost unnoticeable.

After about twenty minutes of moving boxes around I was finally able to get the door open. Inside the room there were a bunch of old mason jars, some dating back to 1915. The room itself looked like it hadn't been touched in thirty or forty years. Everything had a thick layer of dust on it. the walls of the room were lined with newspaper dating back to 1917. Everything had that moldy smell of a tomb. As I looked down at the floor my heart pounded with excitement. The floor was dirt! I quickly go my detector and began to search the floor. Within seconds I got a strong signal. I began probing and got a solid hollow thud at the end of my probe. This was it, this is what I had been waiting for. I dug down about three inches when I uncovered a mason jar lid. I tried to started to pull it out hoping all the while that it was attached to a jar and it was! After I wiped the dirt off the jar I could see that it was full of silver coins. I felt like my heart was going to explode.

After several minutes of patting myself on the back I decided to continue searching the floor. Within a few moments I got two more solid signals side by side. I started removing the dirt to get the first target and I was surprised to find a plastic pail that had been turned upside down covering something. I pulled the pail out of the ground and I almost fell over at the site it revealed. As it turns out the plastic pail was used as a lid to cover a one gallon jar full of coins! It took several minutes to dig the jar out and when I was finally able to get the jar out of the hole I noticed that there was another one right next to it! It was also full of coins and had a plastic pail as a lid.

After that I had to go outside to get some fresh air. I was dizzy and my heart was racing. I had to sit down for awhile and gather my thoughts. It's an experience that I know I'll never forget. I have had a lot of people tell me that it was a once in a lifetime find, but I know there's another one out there just waiting for me to dig it up.