How to Join the Treasure Hunt for Rare Coins Taking Place Across the East Coast

Treasure hunts have long been a staple in fiction, but participating in one in the real world is a relative rarity. (Unless, of course, you consider Pokémon card drops at your local Costco to be a thrilling and dangerous adventure.)

If you’re an aspiring scavenger, a unique promotion by a leading rare coin dealer might be up your alley. Throughout the month of October, coin auction house Stack’s Bowers will be hiding certificates that can be redeemed for rare and valuable coins and banknotes in four major cities. Here's how it works.

1. Join the Adventure
2. Other Treasure Hunts

Join the Adventure

According to a company press release, Stack’s Bowers is using the 90th anniversary of its first public auction as occasion to hide a number of numismatic collectibles in four cities where they have retail gallery locations: New York, Boston, Miami, and Philadelphia. Each week in October, the company will select five well-known locations in one of the cities and choose a place to hide that day’s certificate; clues as to the location will be shared on the company’s Instagram profiles, including their general and retail store pages.

If the paper is found, the bearer can turn it into the local Stack’s Bowers gallery to redeem their prize, which can range from a value of $300 up to $3500. Stack’s Bowers notes the vouchers aren’t hard to find, so no displacement of property will be required.

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The firm has already wrapped up its Boston leg, which ran from October 7 to October 11 and included a 1907 $2.50 gold coin, a 1924 Saint Gaudens $20 gold piece, and a 1881 Morgan silver dollar. All five prizes were redeemed, with each participant solving a riddle. Here’s the clue from Day 3 of the Boston hunt:

A cradle of speeches, loud and proud,
Now filled with shops and bustling crowds.
Seek the notes that once did pay,
Where patriots spoke in a bold old way.

The certificate was located at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, a onetime Boston political hub that now hosts a variety of stores and business.

Here are the remaining dates and locations:

Are you a treasure hunter but not much of a numismatist? Stack’s Bowers gives winners the option of having the coin or banknote bought back by the gallery for cash.

Other Treasure Hunts

Before the advent of social media, books were a popular way of encouraging what came to be known as “armchair treasure hunts,” which required participants to scrutinize words and images for hints. In 1979, artist and author Kit Williams published Masquerade, a series of illustrations that held clues to a golden rabbit Williams had buried in England. The rabbit, worth a few thousand dollars at the time, was found in 1981: The man who excavated it in Bedfordshire allegedly had a little inside information via an ex-partner of Williams.

The following year saw the release of The Secret by Byron Preiss, which promised readers clues to 12 precious gems hidden around the U.S. Preiss showed little mercy in stashing his bounty: Only three have been found in the decades since.

But the most infamous of these premeditated hunts is probably The Thrill of the Chase, a 2010 memoir by New Mexico art dealer Forrest Fenn that hid clues to a treasure chest worth $1.3 million in its concluding poem. The search consumed a great many people for years until a medical student finally retrieved it in Wyoming in 2020.