Have you ever played a trick while treasure hunting??

Nov 8, 2004
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Alamos,Sonora,Mexico
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Ladies Gentlemen: When I returned to Mexico I had a no.of silver Babbitt bars which I intended to cast into diving weights. I had these in a sack of about 75 pounds. These bars were of a size to correspond to about 10 lbs each. they looked like oxidized silver. Because of the high silver etc., content, they clinked instead of clunked.

One day I went to a small village / ranch at the end of a unimproved road to check on two treasures. After a long dusty hot trip, we arrived and of course were invited to the traditional coffee. While drinking it and into small talk, I asked if they had any treasure stories, they said no.

When we finished, my compadre and I left in my New Chevy 3/4 ton pickup and camper shell to check out the spot that we had come for . Nothing, after a few dusty, hot, sweaty, hours of searching, we returned to the ranch. On the way I remembered the Babbitt bars in the sack and suggested that we play a trick on the ranch group,. he agreed.

When we arrived, I parked the pickup away from the ranch house, and while my compadre went to the house to set up more coffee and seemingly tried to keep their attention away from me, I carefully opened the back of the shell, and after apparently looking around to see that no one was looking, (snicker) I carerfully pulled the sack out and went to the passengers side, obviously carrying a very heavy sack which clinked agreeably on each step. I opened the passenger's door and dropped the sack inside, which made another extremely impressive clink. I then made show of locking and rechecking the door, then went to the house for my coffee.

As we were drinking it one of the men asked, "did you find anything"? With a straight face, my compadre said "NO" . A little later another asked the same question, again my compadre answered "NO". As we were getting ready to leave, I went to the pickup and again went through my little act of putting the sack back inside of the shell in a box with a padlock, unfortunately, forgetting to lock it he heh e.. One of the men then suddenly decided that yes, he had a fence post treasure of his former boss to look for. We agreed that we still had time to go look for it..

It was now dark, but six entered the shell and sat on the seats along the sides. I could see them clearly by the running / lights. As soon as we left the ranch, one of them opened the box took out one of the "Silver" bars. After hefting , scratching, and tasting it, passed it around, they all were grinning. When we arrived a the point, the bar was again inside of the box. No-one said anything. The area was quickly searched, nothing, so we returned to the Ranch where we again went through the coffee routine, where again we were asked if we had found anything. Of course we denied it and quickly directed the conversation to another subject.

A little later my friend took out a bank loan to rebuild his house. About this time some of the men from the ranch came by and saw this. To them, it confirmed what they had thought, 'we had found a nice silver bar treasure from the mule train' .

Our success is still told of in the campfires or coffee secsions up there, it revives their faith in treasures.

Don Jose de La Mancha

p.s. Well, potential diving weights WERE involved sniff.
 

My diving buddy had some museum-quality replicas of doubloons. Girlfriend took me to breakfast and of course asked how we were doing on the treasure hunt. "Nothing doing" says I. When she paid the check I slipped the "gold" piece onto the table for a tip. You have never hear a Denny's restaurant get dead quiet so fast.

Chip V.
 

HJIO Chip, very very cute story loved it , and I can just imagine how popular you could easily have been free breakfast?

Err, ahh, --------E\_____/ $$$$$$ ???? hint

Don Jose de La Mancha
 

ALLO Richard Sooo true, so true my friend. Even better is a gentleman's sex :-[ partner he he he for some reason they just have to tell how smart they are, especially after a drinking and a torrid session..

Gals wanna hear of my secret finds, especially Cromwell's ship?? (Hint)

Don Jose de La Mancha
 

Oh boy, do I ever play pranks on my treasure hunting buddies? Absolutely. I am an avid wreck diver, treasure hunter and have a group that does a lot of salvage work on wrecks. I am constantly casting ornate lead crosses, coins, etc. A little gold plating and they look pretty convincing. I've even made a steel stamp to stamp lead coins before plating. I stash these little trinkets on wrecks that we're searching, when found they have the fresh shine of gold and the weight too. There is nothing like seeing one of your buddies' eyes get as big as saucers upon discovery of a six pound gold cross (sometimes encrusted with costume jewelry). Or my favorite, I'll cast some gold bars and stash 'em. When we dive in teams, I'll plant one or two on my dive for the next team to "find". It's funny to see how long it takes some of the guys to admit when they find something. Some pop to the surface, gold in hand in celebration. Some stash it away and hide it while pondering if they should say anything before getting a chance to investigate if there is any more. I once made a chest out of 200 year old barn wood with a set of rusted metal straps and filled it with 75 lbs. of "gold" coins. I burried it in a spot that we'd be doing airlift work the next morning. Be careful when you come to the surface and yell "Drinks are on me!!"
My dive crew is wise to me now but we all get a kick out of it when we've got a "newbie" on the dive. I also leave some stuff behind for another crew to find after we've left....dirty trick? Yep, but it's good for a laugh down the road. We've published a book "Northwest Wreck Dives" so a lot of the wrecks are now dove often....has anyone found any of our "Treasures"? If anyone is interested, the book is available at http://www.boydski.com/Store/book.htm
 

After the last of the 2004 hurricanes i went to detect at one of my favorite spots at new smyrna beach.After i had been there for an hour a bunch of elderly tourists with walmart and radio shack detectors and plastic toy digging tools
showed up.They were digging holes,leaving thier trash in the holes and not covering them up.One of them came up to me and asked if i had found anything yet.I said i sure did but not at this spot but at bethune beach earlier.i pulled out a handful of the replica gold and silver coins to show them.All they could say was Wow!They left in a hurry in all thier cars,never saw them again.

Bethune beach was all sanded in with about 20 feet of sand.I have never ever found anything there.
 

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