Research

Greetings one and all. Anyone into doing research? I am. A couple of things I have found while doing research: Doing research takes a lot of time! My car has been in the shop for the past week, so I have not been able to go treasure hunting. So I do research. Another thing I have found out: You know those state lists of treasure leads? They are found on metal detecting forums and also in books. So far I have done extensive research on five leads in my state. This involves poring over old maps and manuscripts. And doing web searches. Out of the five leads that I have investigated so far, I have only been able to substantiate one lead! This is a small sample, to say the least, but it does suggest that around 75% of the so called "treasure leads and legends" are pure hogwash. I think 75% is a conservative figure, btw. Keep on diggin......

I'll 2nd that!

I spent Hours on hours researching treasure stories. One particular takes place in Carson city and has been well documented. However after pouring through 15 years of news papers from the time period court records and Wells Fargo records I was at a decision point that the story though being in many books and in local history was bogus. Shortly after coming to this conclusion I found a book where another had done the same research. No surprise his conclusion was the same. Moral of the story is that if the story is there someone has researched it all ready and next time Ill start with the books first. Then validate others research and go from there.
HH All

Still researching....Make that ONE out of six treasure leads corroborated now. "If all the treasure that is credited to Kidd was actually buried, he would not have time to be a pirate," Lost Loot - Ghostly New England Treasure Tales, Hughes, Patricia. Schiffer Publishing, 2008

I kind of figured if they had the time to research it to put it in their book, they at least went as far as they could go themselves. Otherwise, why would you give someone else YOUR treasure lead to capitalize on??? I know if I got a good lead on an old site to detect, I don't pass it on to our detector club before I have the "T's" crossed and the "I's" dotted.

Research is a lot of work. I've spent a LOT of time doing research, and for the most part it's not been fruitful, because enough other people did the same research before me and cleaned out the same sites that I found. Only one time I found an unhunted boy scout/church camp, and a guy I shared it with and I hauled out over 100 silver coins (3 walker halfs, ~ 20 silver quarters), several silver rings, sterling silver flatware, one gold ring and other misc goodies.

I wouldn't discourage it, but it's tough to find new spots to hunt.

my two cents is when some one finds the big caches, we never hear about them in the US, only in Europe do they report them, and I bet some of them go under the radar, but research is where the answers are