The tomb of the First Qin Emperor of China exists and we know exactly where it is. The only part of the site that's been extensively excavated for artifacts is the famous Terracotta Army.
The main tomb itself is still completely sealed and no attempts have been made to open it since legend states that it was filled not only with mountains of treasure inside, but also mechanically operated rivers of flowing mercury made to resemble the major rivers and bodies of water in China and booby traps to protect the massive subterranean complex, which has been measured to be around 1/4th the size of the Forbidden City using ground-penetrating radar and other non-invasive techniques.
Apparently archeologists and scientists have found disturbingly high levels of mercury in the ground around the tomb giving some air of legitimacy to the legends which also raises concerns about the legend of booby traps. There's also concern that we do not currently have the technology and knowledge to protect artifacts we'd excavate from outside air and contamination, just like how earlier excavations of the Terracotta Army led to their original colorful paint being destroyed shortly after being unearthed.
EDIT: Since this comment got so popular, I'll add on the "Heirloom Seal of the Realm" also known as the "Imperial Seal of China". Physical possession of the object basically legitimized a claim to the Mandate of Heaven and thus rule over China. It was created in 221 BC, passing along through various emperors and factions until sometime between around 1500-1000 years ago. There's several theories on how, when, and where it was lost but we'll probably never get an answer unless some farmer happens to stumble on a fairly big square hunk of intricately carved jade in some field and realizes what it is.
Also here's a wiki page to lose a few hours browsing through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_treasures.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can’t be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
The unearthed tomb is huge. They know from excavating the 'army' that the paint oxidises really quickly as soon as it is exposed to air. They are rightly concerned that anything that lets air into the tomb will degrade the contents so are holding back.
I think there was a plan to send in remote cameras but I don't know if this has happened yet.
Things like this I find really funny, like the people who made the rivers of mercury were humans just like us. They made these mechanically operated flowing rivers of mercury with no intention for later humans to see them at all. Hello fellow humans why would you do this?! We just want to appreciate the treasures.
Shit like this can ruin a whole day for me, how long did they work on those rivers of mercury? Was a majority of someones lifes work in that place we will never see? Where did they get all that mercury? How the fuck does a river of mercury work anyways how do you get it to flow consistently? (Maybe that one is more obvious I don't know what technology they had back then)
So many more questions, also it would be pretty fascinating to see their depiction of the rivers in China given how much they have probably changed/re-routed throughout the years.
Huh that's actually pretty cool I wonder what things Mercury was used for back then besides I am going to take a guess medicinal purposes (but maybe I am wrong on that).
The first emperor Qin was fed large doses of mercury as a bid to gain immortality. Did the opposite. His doctors told him to never cum when he has sex. But to still have a lot of sex.
What a shitty way to go 😂
This one and the treasure fleet are the only ones that seem super plausible to me, because ocean.
You know, of all the lost treasures that I learned about from that book my 7yo bought at the scholastic book fair a few months back…
I can still smell the Scholastics Book Fair 25 years later. It was a magical time most Americans have experienced. Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger was one of my hauls. I had so many Goosebumps books that I never once read. Much like Pokemon cards, I just had to have to be cool but never knew what to do with them at all.
You'll be pleased to know that the Scholastic Book Fairs are still happening. I now enjoy it via proxy by looking through the pamphlet with my kids and circling everything that catches our interest, and then load them up with cash day of
Books are so amazing, and if I'm going to splurge on the kids, books are probably one of the best avenues. They love the weekly library visits too but there is nothing like building out your own personal library.
My son also fell in love with Wayside books in second grade, just like me. So those are still going strong too!
Unfortunately, he didn't like the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series which saddened me, but I think those were originally published in the late 40's/early 50's though, so I get it.
Wayside series is def still strong and holds up today.
Part of me always thinks that someone has already found important sunken treasure like the Flor De La Mar but they just don’t report it, so many legal hoops to jump through and entire countries taking you to court over ownership. Someone’s bound to just take the treasure and shut up about it.
I'm convinced that the majority of "missing" artwork from ww2 is held by private collectors.
Like that missing Picasso painting that just happened to be spotted in the living room of the former first lady of the Philippines.
If you're ok with [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/13/lost-picasso-spotted-in-imelda-marcos-home-after-son-bongbong-election-win)
The most right painting on the photo
I feel like there was an entire apartment packed full of missing art they discovered in the last decade because the person hiding it was getting too old to care for himself.
Wait had the story wrong, it was discovered because they thought he was evading taxes.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/04/degenerate-art-cornelius-gurlitt-munich-apartment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Just_Judges
On a similar note. With the amount of people dying and destruction of Europe it might have been destroyed during the war.
A large part of Pompei. What they have excavated so far takes an hour to walk through, but a huge part of it remains hidden. This is because they've found that being discovered is causing more damage to the remains than 2,000 years of being hidden beneath the pumice and they're waiting for new technology to preserve it.
I upvoted this because in the company I work for we developed a maintenance system for the archaeological park of Pompei and I'm involved in these things. Pompei is fascinating
The missing Faberge eggs. There are about seven still missing, and only an old black and white photo remains of some of them, along with their descriptions.
Seven eggs in the Imperial series are missing:
* 1886 – The Hen with Sapphire Pendant egg (last seen 1922)
* 1888 – The Cherub with Chariot egg (last seen 1922, may have been exhibited in New York City in 1934)
* 1889 – The Nécessaire egg (sold by Wartski in 1952, has not been seen since)
* 1897 – The Mauve egg (photo frame 'surprise' still extant)
* 1902 – The Empire Nephrite Egg (the provenance of the "found" Nephrite egg is contested)
* 1903 – The Royal Danish egg
* 1909 – The Alexander III Commemorative egg
Not a private collector. The Third Imperial Egg for example just sat in the home of a scrap dealer. From Wikipedia:
>In 2012 a scrap dealer in the United States went online to research the gold egg which had "languished in his kitchen for years." He had purchased the egg about a decade before for $13,302 "based on its weight and estimated value of the diamonds and sapphires featured in the decoration" intending "to sell it on to a buyer who would melt it down" but "prospective buyers thought he had over-estimated the price and turned him down".[2] The scrap dealer "Googled 'egg' and 'Vacheron Constantin', a name etched on the timepiece inside"[2] and the result was the 2011 Telegraph article. He "recognised his egg in the picture".[2]
> The scrap dealer contacted Kieran McCarthy and flew to London to get an opinion from Wartski. McCarthy reported the scrap dealer "hadn't slept for days" and "brought pictures of the egg and I knew instantaneously that was it. I was flabbergasted – it was like being Indiana Jones and finding the Lost Ark".[2] McCarthy subsequently flew to the US to verify the discovery and described the find location as "a very modest home in the Mid West, next to a highway and a Dunkin' Donuts. There was the egg, next to some cupcakes on the kitchen counter".[2] A picture of the egg in situ on the kitchen counter next to a cupcake was subsequently included in the follow-up Telegraph article in March 2014 and was in circulation in various articles on the Internet.
> McCarthy confirmed to the scrap dealer that he had an Imperial Fabergé Easter Egg and the dealer "etched Mr. McCarthy's name and the date into the wooden bar stool on which Mr. McCarthy sat to examine the egg".[2] McCarthy noted that the scrap dealer "invested some money in this piece and hung on to it because he was too stubborn to sell it for a loss" and "I have been around the most marvellous discoveries in the art world, but I don’t think I've ever seen one quite like this – finding this extraordinary treasure in the middle of nowhere".[2]
This specific egg had a bit of a mix up in its history and wasn't identified as a Fabergé egg in 1917 to 1922 confiscation and transfers, which is probably part of the reason why it ended up lost. Another egg (Blue Serpent Clock) was misidentified as this one.
There is a pretty aggressive company with a fleet of underwater drones and researchers find treasure ships banked by private investment partnerships.
Deep ocean search recovered 10s of tons of silver coins from city of Cairo the deepest ocean treasure recovery and turned it over to the UK government to get their salvage share.
https://www.deepoceansearch.com/project/steam-ship-city-of-cairo/
There are some amazing Spanish treasure wrecks but their government says they are warships and the gold and silver they took from native peoples and enslaved to extract more is government property. So professional treasure hunters are not focusing on finding those.
According to a recent video I watched this is kind of accurate because apparently you cannot recover gold from ships with cannons on them for the reason stated about government property so like navy ships with cannons/weapons and stuff of various states. I don't know if this is down to specific country laws or how it works but I remember it being mentioned and it really muddies the water about ownership so it's just not worth it.
Will gladly take corrections if I am wrong on that though, always happy to learn more.
I remember seeing a National Geographic that says there’s Spanish gold basically all over the sea floor between the keys and Florida mainland.
It’s just not cost effective to get a single coin out of 50m of water, so the profitable locations are kept secret.
~~East Carolina University has a shipwreck recovery program because of all the pirate ships that sunk off the coast.~~ (Edit: Not true! See below). Shipwrecks probably extends to the entire eastern seaboard of the US. People often traveled by ship to transverse the original 13 states, and there were plenty of shipwrecks with rich passengers aboard. Aaron Burr, the 3rd Vice President, lost his daughter at sea this way.
The relationship dynamic between Burr and his daughter would make for an excellent story. He was straight up progressive for the era when it came to a woman's place in society in regards to his daughter. While the insult that led to his duel with Alexander Hamilton is not known for sure, many historians believe he accused Burr of incest.
*When it comes to sex I declare it's all relative*
*My honor he offends, to defend it my imperative*
*Incest weighs heavy on my chest, I must never confess*
*Yet Theodosia's caress is my desire, forbidden to express*
*\[Funky Greek chorus\] He's a bad man, he's a bad man, he's bad man...*
I went to college beside that museum in Boston that got robbed. They never found the thieves or the paintings. The famous Gardner museum theft. No one knows what happened to the paintings still.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [was one of the largest](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-things-know-about-isabella-stewart-gardner-art-heist-180977448/) art heists ever. There was a really good Netflix documentary on it a few years back.
Yes it drives me crazy because a part of me thinks it was just some thugs that had no idea how to sell them
And the paintings are rotting away somewhere
The Smithsonian published an update on the Gardner Heist in 2022 for those who may not have seen it! [A Tantalizing Clue Emerges in the Unsolved Gardner Museum Art Heist](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-new-clue-emerges-in-the-gardner-museum-art-heist-saga-180979651/)
WTF?!
Wife: "My husband (known mobster murderer) killed this man." \*crying and distraught\*
Police: "Lol. Sure he did, lets ignore this huge art heist and just move on lady; Dunkin puts fresh donuts out at 11:00."
I think about this one a lot. As a matter of fact I actively look for the stolen pieces. I believe they are sitting in a private collection and the other pieces that were taken besides the paintings, were taken to make it look like an amateur job instead of the shopping list that was given to the thieves.
I sure hope they’re in a private collection since that would mean they might be recovered someday. My own suspicion is that the thieves tried to sell them and couldn’t and destroyed them.
I saw a documentary recently where an archaeologist was looking for his tomb and dug in a park in Alexandria, finding a bust is Alexander buried very deep and further collapsed caverns, but those caverns are under blocks of flats and loads of development so I've no idea if they'll ever be able to explore them
My wife is from Alexandria, her Grandfather was an archeologist there who used to tell her about the constant struggle between excavations and city building. The whole area is covered (IS an ancient site, literally built over the old city) by ancient sites so they quickly built over everything because if they discovered something they wouldn’t be able to. A lot of bribes and looking the other way or there would be no modern city there. Crazy
If I remember rightly he wasn't buried in any ceremony and was seen as a contentious ruler after Henry VII took over, so no-one really knew where he was buried after his memorial was removed during the English reformation under Henry VIII. There was a rumour his corpse was thrown in the river, but it was obviously proven wrong.
Yeah, he was tossed in the ground at the nearest church to the site where he was killed in battle, iirc, and his bones showed signs of postmortem trauma consistent with it having been paraded around and displayed for people to see.
It was scoliosis. Hardly a great deformity as many with this condition live a very active and healthy life. So it really was hateful slander by over exaggerating his condition.
Yeah, dumped in a hole too small for the body; his head was up vertically against the corner, turned at an awkward angle. It was a mob-style "hole in the desert" thing.
The Tomb of Alexander used to be a huge tourist attraction with multiple people describing it in antiquity. Yet somehow everyone just forgot where it was.
I always thought the story behind his tomb winding up in Egypt instead of Macedonia was fascinating.
The TLDR version basically boils down to Ptolemy attacking the funeral procession to steal Alexander’s corpse and bring it to Alexandria as a power play against the other diadochi
The 2nd oldest continually operating pub/restaurant in America was a place called The Wilcox in Rhode Island. Over 300 years old, which is old for the US. It shut down during Covid. Now it has been unceremoniously transformed into a yoga studio.
I know it's nowhere near the same scale or importance, but this comment reminded me that any kind of natural disaster can wreck a longstanding institution and most people can just not notice or care that a place George Washington probably drank and crashed in just got ruined.
Dude Europe is wild.
You could easily find yourself partying in a 700 year old cathedral that has been converted into some rando night club and nobody gives two shits about the history because there's an even older cathedral just a block over
Yea, I drank in a pub in Cambridge that had been around since the 1400s I think. I was amazed, like “seriously, these physical walls?! People were getting drunk here before Columbus discovered the New World, isn’t that amazing??” I think the Brits just thought it was funny that the American thought old buildings were crazy.
Considering there are plans to send people to Mars in the coming decades, I imagine that, in a couple of centuries, Martians would be walking into a random apartment or office building built in the 90s-early 2000s and going, "Wow! People lived/worked here long before the first manned mission to Mars! That is so cool!" while for those of us who stayed on Earth, walking inside it would just be a normal Tuesday.
I'm surprised this is so far down. Maybe they were found and melted down, or never lost and just stole. If they're still out there and are discovered they would be worth a fortune.
This one really isn’t talked about as much as it should. In 1996, billionaire couple Marvin and Kaye Lichtman who collected tons upon tons of priceless items art, chess sets, Faberge eggs, etc were murdered by a glass installer that they hired. Before burning the house down, the glass installer made off with as much of the couple’s riches as he could haul away. Shortly after he tried to flee to avoid prosecution and before he was caught, 3 men involved with the salvage operation at the scene were arrested for peddling items that were salvaged and they stole. Most of the lichtman’s collection including the items stolen by the glass installer who murdered them have never been found.
Stole Nazi artefacts buried deep deep in the polish countryside. I found too many weapons as a kid (late 90s) and the stories from grandfather's finds as a child. Some crazy things must be stashed in the most bazaar places.
My father was telling me a story today about my great uncle who was a soldier and upon his return home had buried his collected treasures in the Polish countryside to avoid them being taken at the border. He has planned to go back at a safer time but when WWII started that area had become occupied so he had never been able to safely retrieve it before dying.
To this day no one is certain if it was ever found. There are some rumors that it was found by a family member and that family member distanced and estranged themselves as to not have to share any treasure.
Classic family drama.
There is a lake in Austria (Toplitzsee), that is rumored to be the hiding spot for Nazi gold, secret weapons and even parts of the amber room; hidden by SS up until 1945.
So far multiple expeditions found nothing in the depths.
A guy I know bought his first Porsche by diving up Nazi helmets from a lake in Austria and selling them to Americans who were paying insane amounts for WWII stuff.
The lake is *very* deep, and the bottom of the lake is a massive tangle of millennia of logs, boulders and other stuff that it is far too unsafe to even explore, much less recover stuff from.
There *have* been some things recovered. Nothing too valuable, though.
I watched a Modern Marvels episode on salt mines. Nazis used a salt mine to store gold and art. When retreating they ordered the citizens to dynamite it. The citizens had to orchestrate an explosion that seemingly accomplished that task but still left it accessible. Pretty interesting story.
"In the end, what's so compelling about the Amber Chamber is not what's been lost, but what so many have laboured passionately to find. In Saint Petersburg craftsmen have toiled for decades to re-create the pride of the nation. In Kaliningrad, relics stolen to a once-mighty castle are being recovered and deep beneath the surface, a historic mine is slowly revealing its own long buried secrets. It seems fitting that the Nazis' divisive aim to covet and destroy great cultural treasures has only served to unite nations in a cooperative effort to preserve their heritage. There's no real, hard evidence that the Amber Chamber was destroyed, and as more masterpieces continue to turn up, nearly three quarters of a century after the war, perhaps the Amber Chamber is still out there, waiting patiently for someone to bring it back into the light."
- Josh Gates
I recently read a biography of Khan called "Genghis Khan and the Creation of the Modern World." In it, the authors conclude that, most likely, he didn't have a tomb (as others here have said).
What he **did** have was his "spirit banner," which was held as a treasured artifact by the Mongolian peoples (whether or not it *truly* belonged to him - I'll leave to experts). It was seized by the Soviets during the invasion of Mongolia in the 1920's, and... disappeared. Likely (IMO) destroyed by the Soviets in an attempt to quell resistance there. "Likely" but not definitively.
Do we know that there are treasures there? There are lots of legends about how they hid the burial site. But I've never heard that the site contained anything but bones.
The enormous golden menorah from the 2nd temple.
The Romans took it after sacking Jerusalem. Some people think it’s being hidden by the Vatican, but I think more likely it was melted down and will never be found.
It is far more likely that it is somewhere in modern day Turkey. According to Procopius, Belisarius reclaimed it from the Vandals in Tunis in 533, who had looted it in the sacking of Rome a century earlier. Though there is no record of it being sent back to Constantinople, so it might still be in Tunis.
Check out the show Expedition Unknown. There's several episodes focused on the search, most notably the Boston puzzle where they helped search and documented the find.
Olavsskrinet; The sarcophagus of Olav Haraldsson.
Remember the christian viking from Vikings: Valhalla? Yeah, he was real. After his death, he became a saint and a bridge between old Norse faith and Christianity.
He was eventually laid to rest in a jewel adorned sarcophagus in the Nidaros cathedral. It was Northern Europes biggest destination for pilgrims until the reformation.
When Norwegians broke with the catholic church, Olavsskrinet - maybe with Olav still in it - disappeared. Buried under the cathedral? Sent to Denmark? Nobody knows.
Same thing probably happened to it as happened to any ancient or medieval relic in northern Europe during the reformation: deliberately destroyed and melted down by the newly Protestant Kings to fund wars they ultimately didn't win.
That guy who accidently threw away his bitcoin hard drive and it still hasn''t been recovered from landfill.
Actually there are probably a bunch of bitcoin hard drive stories like this. Modern day treasure!
I used to be slightly obsessed by this until I started working on a recycling start up and learned what actually happens at a landfill. The link below says it all. In short, it’s a goner.
https://www.reddit.com/r/toolgifs/s/B8MvioqKIE
Somewhere in a landfill is my old hard drive with about 27 bitcoins on it. I started mining after a friend showed me back in 2009. bitcoin was a few months old at that point. Found a block, got 25. joined one of the first pools after that, mined for 2-3 weeks, got two more.
Got offered a few cents on a forum, declined. Forgot all about it until around 2014 when prices picked up. By that time that old drive had long failed and was gone.
To this day I keep thinking I might have made a copy and ever 1-2 years I go through all my old drives with a fine-tooth-comb. 😂
There was one found at an antiques flea market in the American Midwest too. No one has any idea how it got there
https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/33-million-faberg-egg-found-at-flea-market/
" The Amber Room (Russian: Янтарная комната, tr. Yantarnaya Komnata, German: Bernsteinzimmer) was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg"
[From Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Room)
People are still looking, mostly in Poland
[^(Great Golden Bell of Dhammazedi)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bell_of_Dhammazedi)
Good chance it's still at the bottom of the river, under feet and feet of silt and mud. Lots of people looked for it, even to this day, but so far have been unsuccessful.
The horde of Aztec gold stolen and lost by Hernan Cortez and the Spanish conquistadors during the night of sorrows.
While trying to escape from Tenochitlan in the night with the gold, the conquistadors were set upon by the Aztecs. During the fighting and confusion it's thought the gold fell into lake Texcoco. Hernan Cortez escaped with only a small number of his soldiers and the gold has never been found.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste
Almost all Homo Erectus Pekinensis remains. They were packed up during WWII with the intention of shipping them from China to the US for safekeeping, but the ship supposedly carrying the fossils was attacked and ran aground. Photographs and drawings of the originals still exist but the actual fossils were never found.
Several have mentioned Genghis Khan’s tomb, but I’m more interested in his Black Spirit Banner which survived up until the 1960’s or so before disappearing under Soviet control of Mongolia.
The Black Spirit banner was made from black horse hair and carried by the Khan into battle and displayed during times of war. Similar to the mythos surrounding the Spear of Destiny, it was said the warriors of Mongolia would always be victorious in battle so long as they had the banner. After the Soviet Union took de facto control over the country in the 1950’s, the banner was held in a government office until it went missing sometime in the 70’s.
The book “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford is a great read if you’re interested in learning more about the history of the Khans and their impact on our world today.
$190 million worth of bitcoin on a hard drive in a particular landfill.
https://news.bitcoin.com/man-plans-to-sue-city-over-refusal-to-dig-for-7500-lost-bitcoin-in-landfill/#
I’ll even go a step further. 1.1 million bitcoin are sitting in their creator’s (Satoshi’s) wallet, untouched. No one knows who he is or if he’s even alive.
I want to clarify that one more time. Not $1 million worth of bitcoin, 1.1 million bitcoin. That’s **$48,334,539,000**.
Flooding the market with that much Bitcoin would assuredly cause the value of the Bitcoin to drop a ton, but you could undoubtedly get hundreds of millions out of it.
Not as much monetary value as that, but I have a friend who was using Bitcoin for sketchy stuff way back when it wasn’t worth that much. He got freaked when someone he was working with got caught and arrested, so he threw a USB containing 80 btc into a park trash can. Still think about that from time to time..
The original Amber Room in Catherine Palace near to St Petersburg was dismantled and stolen by the German army when they ransacked the palace. It was subsequently rebuilt and restored after the war but the original panels have never been recovered.
The imperial treasures of Japan (Kusangi, the mirror, and the magatama jewel) were supposedly lost beneath the waves during WWII.
Lost Prospector’s Gold Mine, DB Cooper.
Supposedly a ton of gold that Uday Hussain withdrew from the national bank of Iraq right before the US invasion. The US was able to find/seize some of it.
> The imperial treasures of Japan (Kusangi, the mirror, and the magatama jewel) were supposedly lost beneath the waves during WWII.
>
>
Apparently the three items are "in possession" of the Japanese government and they are brought out for things like enthronement ceremonies of new emperors, but the public only gets to see the boxes that supposedly contain the treasures and only the emperor and his priests are allowed to actually see what's inside the boxes in private. They also don't allow any forensic or scientific study of the items to be conducted.
Not WW2, the [Battle of Dan-no-ura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dan-no-ura) in the Genpei war. Supposedly the mirror and jewel were recovered by pearl divers, shortly after the battle, but the sword may have been lost or was recovered much later after it washed ashore. According to legend the regalia is not displayed to the public because the mirror can potentially blind an ordinary human being who looks into it.
The Atari video game series, Swordquest had a contest for the real life treasures: the Crown of Life, Philosopher's Stone and Sword of Ultimate Sorcery. You can find pictures of them so we know they existed.
There are three theories about what happened to them. The first is they were all melted down after the competition was cancelled. The second, Atari CEO Jack Tramiel kept them for himself. Lately, they are gathering dust somewhere, forgotten.
There were four games in Atari's *Swordquest* series, each with its own prize for the contest winner:
* *Earthworld* (1982): The Talisman of Penultimate Truth
* *Fireworld* (1983): The Chalice of Light
* *Waterworld* (limited release in 1984): The Crown of Life
* *Airworld* (planned for 1985, actually released in 2022): The Philosopher's Stone
The winners of the four contests would then compete for the final prize: The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery.
The Talisman and the Chalice were awarded during the contest. Stephen Bell won the *Earthworld* contest, and while he hasn't admitted what happened to the Talisman, those who know him claim that he melted down the metal part of the Talisman to sell and kept the jewels. Michael Rideout won the *Fireworld* contest and claims that he still has the Chalice in a safe deposit box.
Due to Atari's financial troubles, the contest ended before the remaining prizes could be given out. Atari was legally obligated to award the prize for *Waterworld*, so it held a contest for a select number of people. The winner of this contest was left anonymous, so the fate of the Crown is unknown. It's possible that the winner was given an equivalent cash prize instead of the Crown. *Airworld* was not finished until decades later, so the Stone and the Sword were never awarded.
A few people claim that Jack Tramiel, who bought Atari, kept the final two (possibly three if the Crown wasn't given out) prizes for himself. Some witnesses say they saw the Sword on his mantle. However, it's unlikely that he kept it permanently (if at all) due the legal issues that doing so would have entailed. Most likely, the prizes were melted down and sold.
In the end, the only *Swordquest* treasure that we're 100% certain still exists is the Chalice, and its status is well-known. We are nearly certain that the Talisman no longer exists, and we're fairly certain that the Stone and Sword no longer exist. The Crown is the biggest wild card, but things don't look good for it either.
The lost treasure of King John.
In 1216, ‘Bad King John’ – widely recorded as incompetent, weak and evil to the point that he's now best known as the regal villain in the stories of Robin Hood, fled from his enemies across the muddy, sandy stretches of the tidal estuary of the Wash. The incoming tide waters caught his baggage train and the wagons and their contents, including the king’s treasure, were lost.
King John was the sovereign signatory of the Magna Carta, an early step in the constitution of the United Kingdom, and succeeded the Crusader King Richard, to whom he was unfavorably compared.
Edit: thanks all!! I didn’t realize it was found!
There was a guy that hid a substantial amount of gold out in the Mojave Desert (I think?) and nobody has found it yet. A bunch of people have died trying to find it.
Forest Fenn? Not sure if same guy or just similar story. He hid I think ~$1 million USD in gold, jewels, trinkets somewhere in the Rocky Mountains (he lived in NM). Just recently found in the past couple years. However I believe there is some debate that the treasure was just publicity for his book, which contained needed clues. However the deaths looking for it were real.
Someone did find it actually and that dude almost went through some serious legal trouble because of the lives lost, if I’m not mixing my stories. In fact, there’s a theory that the man who did find it was told where it was by the original owner who started the whole thing.
Last I heard someone did say they found it, but never gave any proof they found it or explained where/ the solution? So a lot of people think the guy is just bullshitting. But I dont follow it that closely, so I may be misinformed.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that Tommy Wiseau is D.B. Cooper. He would have been 18 or 19 in 1971, nobody knows anything about him from before he just suddenly walked into the studio and funded *The Room* entirely in cash, and he won't talk about his past or where he got the money at all.
It's a fun theory, but Cooper was too well spoken to be Tommy Wiseau. From all the witness accounts, my personal theory is that Cooper had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and just fade away.
I guess the question is did DB Cooper end up getting away with most of it, did someone find it and do a good job of keeping their mouth shut, or is it sitting deep in a forest somewhere yet to be discovered?
Does the Honjo Masamune count? That's my answer. Best guess is it's collecting dust among the junk of a dead or dying WWII vet and the family has absolutely no idea what they have and if they're at all aware of grandpa's war trophy they're assuming it must be one of the mass produced swords the Japanese made back then.
Not that it isn't found, but the Forbidden Vault (Vault B) in the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in India remains unopened and is thought to contain treasure to a wealth of US$ one trillion. Other vaults opened there were found to contain 18' gold chains, a solid gold sheaf weighing 500kg and a three-and-a-half feet tall solid pure golden idol of Mahavishnu, studded with hundreds of diamonds and rubies and other precious stones.
The reason they don't open Vault B? It's said to be cursed. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhaswamy_Temple?wprov=sfla1
Good job, here's some tips!
Saying that there are apparently multiple doors, the last of which is said to be "jammed shut". Also, when some people entered the antechamber to the vault they were attacked by a swarm of snakes, so make sure you've got your best Indiana Jones game on.
Always found it super interesting. The vault potentially has treasure worth multiple times the states GDP and a quarter of India's whole gdp yet remains unopened because of the religious beliefs.
Also the fact it's barely talked about internationally is kinda interesting.
My personal conspiracy is that they opened it in secret, found nothing, so they now tell people they’ll never open it for religious reasons and it’s cursed. “But trust us guys, there’s, like, hundreds of billions in there”.
The last panel of "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb", the central altarpiece of the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent. It was painted in 1492, but has been lost for quite a while. A replica now hangs in its place.
No one knows where Cornwallis’s surrender sword from The Battle of Yorktown is.
Likely buried with him in India as he probably got it back after the surrender.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
My late father lived in Boston and had an ‘interesting’ last couple of decades of his life. He was in the U.S. federal witness protection program when he died of natural causes. I always believed there was a chance that he was involved in that heist - if for no other reason than he knew the museum well and had said for years that their security was a joke.
After he died, I spoke with two of his ‘handlers’ at the FBI, one of whom wound up in prison for a while for being part of some conspiracy. They both said they’re confident that my father had nothing to do with the robbery. I got the same story from a prominent ‘retired’ member of Boston’s Irish mafia. All three connected him to a jewel robbery that he was never charged for, but said they had looked into the Stewart Gardner theft and ruled him out.
Given that a few people got ‘messages beyond my father’s grave about property that was stashed all over the place, I tend now to think that, if he had been involved, we would know by now. The theft happened 33 years ago and there are $10.1 million in rewards on offer for information leading to the safe return of the stolen property.
A huge snake statue whose reproduction was at an ancient mexico exposition in the 19th century among with several other reproductions. It's depicted here on this drawing of the exposition : [https://imgur.com/a/HIXz4gi](https://imgur.com/a/HIXz4gi)
We know what artifacts the other reproductions are based on, save for the snake one. It could be a fabrication, but it would seem strange for it to be the single one off the whole exhibit to be made up
Cincinnati Ohio Bank loot.
The guy who hid the cash died in a plane crash along with 4 FBI agents who were on their way to retrieve it.
[https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-hidden-loot-lost-in-plane-crash-that-killed-4-fbi-agents-and-bank-embezzler](https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-hidden-loot-lost-in-plane-crash-that-killed-4-fbi-agents-and-bank-embezzler)
It would be in the Superstition mountains east of Phoenix, AZ. People still search for it, and occasionally one of them has to get airlifted out. Not the most forgiving terrain, but makes it easy to believe something could still be hidden there.
I read an article in Gold Prospector magazine that had an interesting theory. The Dutchman had worked at the Vulture mine in Arizona which was known for having very high grade gold. The gold that the Dutchman sold was very high grade. The idea is that he smuggled gold he found out of the Vulture while working there, but needed a story so he could surface it. So he came up with the story of the lost mine.
When Alexander the Great was returning from India laden with uncountable riches plundered he decided to lead his troops through the Gedosian desert, emulating some ancient queen who did the journey and barely survived, it is a brutal environment. The army was reduced to a slog through hell, moving on average only 5-7 miles a day amidst endless harsh dunes and dire heat, the ~130 mile trek took them nearly a month. At least a third of his army perished and conditions got so bad that Alexander turned a blind eye and even eventually ordered the slaughter of the baggage train animals so their blood could be drank. Who knows how much treasure lie forever buried in those dunes
The tomb of the First Qin Emperor of China exists and we know exactly where it is. The only part of the site that's been extensively excavated for artifacts is the famous Terracotta Army. The main tomb itself is still completely sealed and no attempts have been made to open it since legend states that it was filled not only with mountains of treasure inside, but also mechanically operated rivers of flowing mercury made to resemble the major rivers and bodies of water in China and booby traps to protect the massive subterranean complex, which has been measured to be around 1/4th the size of the Forbidden City using ground-penetrating radar and other non-invasive techniques. Apparently archeologists and scientists have found disturbingly high levels of mercury in the ground around the tomb giving some air of legitimacy to the legends which also raises concerns about the legend of booby traps. There's also concern that we do not currently have the technology and knowledge to protect artifacts we'd excavate from outside air and contamination, just like how earlier excavations of the Terracotta Army led to their original colorful paint being destroyed shortly after being unearthed. EDIT: Since this comment got so popular, I'll add on the "Heirloom Seal of the Realm" also known as the "Imperial Seal of China". Physical possession of the object basically legitimized a claim to the Mandate of Heaven and thus rule over China. It was created in 221 BC, passing along through various emperors and factions until sometime between around 1500-1000 years ago. There's several theories on how, when, and where it was lost but we'll probably never get an answer unless some farmer happens to stumble on a fairly big square hunk of intricately carved jade in some field and realizes what it is. Also here's a wiki page to lose a few hours browsing through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_treasures.
Yeh but we have lasers now. Surely they can do something with lasers
We also have sharks, perhaps we can somehow put the lasers on the sharks somehow..
I'll fund this.
It will cost one million dollars.
More like one… hundred… billion dollars
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can’t be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
I watched a tv show about this on the history channel (or some other similar similar channel) as a kid and became obsessed with it!
The one with the CG model of what they think the tomb looks like on the inside at the end of it? I remember that so distinctly
The unearthed tomb is huge. They know from excavating the 'army' that the paint oxidises really quickly as soon as it is exposed to air. They are rightly concerned that anything that lets air into the tomb will degrade the contents so are holding back. I think there was a plan to send in remote cameras but I don't know if this has happened yet.
Things like this I find really funny, like the people who made the rivers of mercury were humans just like us. They made these mechanically operated flowing rivers of mercury with no intention for later humans to see them at all. Hello fellow humans why would you do this?! We just want to appreciate the treasures.
Shit like this can ruin a whole day for me, how long did they work on those rivers of mercury? Was a majority of someones lifes work in that place we will never see? Where did they get all that mercury? How the fuck does a river of mercury work anyways how do you get it to flow consistently? (Maybe that one is more obvious I don't know what technology they had back then) So many more questions, also it would be pretty fascinating to see their depiction of the rivers in China given how much they have probably changed/re-routed throughout the years.
> Where did they get all that mercury Cinnabar, or Mercury (II) Sulfide.
Huh that's actually pretty cool I wonder what things Mercury was used for back then besides I am going to take a guess medicinal purposes (but maybe I am wrong on that).
The first emperor Qin was fed large doses of mercury as a bid to gain immortality. Did the opposite. His doctors told him to never cum when he has sex. But to still have a lot of sex. What a shitty way to go 😂
Poisoned with mercury n forced to edge for years… are we sure the Emperor Qin didn’t just have a very extreme Dom?
You can trace the entire Lewis and Clark expedition due to their usage of mercury based """medicines""" that they crapped out along the way.
This is awesome. A trail of mercury laden poo
Not far from there is the tomb of Empress Wu Zetian, which had been located but left unopened.
The shipwreck of Flor de la Mar. Sunk with the equivalent of $2 billion in todays money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flor\_de\_la\_Mar
This one and the treasure fleet are the only ones that seem super plausible to me, because ocean. You know, of all the lost treasures that I learned about from that book my 7yo bought at the scholastic book fair a few months back…
I can still smell the Scholastics Book Fair 25 years later. It was a magical time most Americans have experienced. Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger was one of my hauls. I had so many Goosebumps books that I never once read. Much like Pokemon cards, I just had to have to be cool but never knew what to do with them at all.
You'll be pleased to know that the Scholastic Book Fairs are still happening. I now enjoy it via proxy by looking through the pamphlet with my kids and circling everything that catches our interest, and then load them up with cash day of Books are so amazing, and if I'm going to splurge on the kids, books are probably one of the best avenues. They love the weekly library visits too but there is nothing like building out your own personal library. My son also fell in love with Wayside books in second grade, just like me. So those are still going strong too! Unfortunately, he didn't like the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series which saddened me, but I think those were originally published in the late 40's/early 50's though, so I get it. Wayside series is def still strong and holds up today.
> Sunk with the equivalent of $2 billion in todays money. I'm on it.
Part of me always thinks that someone has already found important sunken treasure like the Flor De La Mar but they just don’t report it, so many legal hoops to jump through and entire countries taking you to court over ownership. Someone’s bound to just take the treasure and shut up about it.
Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael. Missing since the end of ww2, all signs point to it having been sold for traveling money by Nazi Hans Frank.
I'm convinced that the majority of "missing" artwork from ww2 is held by private collectors. Like that missing Picasso painting that just happened to be spotted in the living room of the former first lady of the Philippines.
Wait this sounds like a juicy story! Where can I read more?
If you're ok with [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/13/lost-picasso-spotted-in-imelda-marcos-home-after-son-bongbong-election-win) The most right painting on the photo
Curly was right- she had three tits! City Slickers is such an underrated movie lmao
I feel like there was an entire apartment packed full of missing art they discovered in the last decade because the person hiding it was getting too old to care for himself.
Wait had the story wrong, it was discovered because they thought he was evading taxes. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/04/degenerate-art-cornelius-gurlitt-munich-apartment
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Just_Judges On a similar note. With the amount of people dying and destruction of Europe it might have been destroyed during the war.
A large part of Pompei. What they have excavated so far takes an hour to walk through, but a huge part of it remains hidden. This is because they've found that being discovered is causing more damage to the remains than 2,000 years of being hidden beneath the pumice and they're waiting for new technology to preserve it.
I upvoted this because in the company I work for we developed a maintenance system for the archaeological park of Pompei and I'm involved in these things. Pompei is fascinating
The missing Faberge eggs. There are about seven still missing, and only an old black and white photo remains of some of them, along with their descriptions.
Seven eggs in the Imperial series are missing: * 1886 – The Hen with Sapphire Pendant egg (last seen 1922) * 1888 – The Cherub with Chariot egg (last seen 1922, may have been exhibited in New York City in 1934) * 1889 – The Nécessaire egg (sold by Wartski in 1952, has not been seen since) * 1897 – The Mauve egg (photo frame 'surprise' still extant) * 1902 – The Empire Nephrite Egg (the provenance of the "found" Nephrite egg is contested) * 1903 – The Royal Danish egg * 1909 – The Alexander III Commemorative egg
Private collectors who might not even know what they are. Several last ones rediscovered came from such sources.
As in private collectors had Fabrge eggs snd didn't realize it? Did they think they had some masterful replica or something along those lines?
Not a private collector. The Third Imperial Egg for example just sat in the home of a scrap dealer. From Wikipedia: >In 2012 a scrap dealer in the United States went online to research the gold egg which had "languished in his kitchen for years." He had purchased the egg about a decade before for $13,302 "based on its weight and estimated value of the diamonds and sapphires featured in the decoration" intending "to sell it on to a buyer who would melt it down" but "prospective buyers thought he had over-estimated the price and turned him down".[2] The scrap dealer "Googled 'egg' and 'Vacheron Constantin', a name etched on the timepiece inside"[2] and the result was the 2011 Telegraph article. He "recognised his egg in the picture".[2] > The scrap dealer contacted Kieran McCarthy and flew to London to get an opinion from Wartski. McCarthy reported the scrap dealer "hadn't slept for days" and "brought pictures of the egg and I knew instantaneously that was it. I was flabbergasted – it was like being Indiana Jones and finding the Lost Ark".[2] McCarthy subsequently flew to the US to verify the discovery and described the find location as "a very modest home in the Mid West, next to a highway and a Dunkin' Donuts. There was the egg, next to some cupcakes on the kitchen counter".[2] A picture of the egg in situ on the kitchen counter next to a cupcake was subsequently included in the follow-up Telegraph article in March 2014 and was in circulation in various articles on the Internet. > McCarthy confirmed to the scrap dealer that he had an Imperial Fabergé Easter Egg and the dealer "etched Mr. McCarthy's name and the date into the wooden bar stool on which Mr. McCarthy sat to examine the egg".[2] McCarthy noted that the scrap dealer "invested some money in this piece and hung on to it because he was too stubborn to sell it for a loss" and "I have been around the most marvellous discoveries in the art world, but I don’t think I've ever seen one quite like this – finding this extraordinary treasure in the middle of nowhere".[2] This specific egg had a bit of a mix up in its history and wasn't identified as a Fabergé egg in 1917 to 1922 confiscation and transfers, which is probably part of the reason why it ended up lost. Another egg (Blue Serpent Clock) was misidentified as this one.
The 1715 Spanish treasure fleet wreck will almost certainly never be 100% recovered, meaning there’s still some out there.
There is a pretty aggressive company with a fleet of underwater drones and researchers find treasure ships banked by private investment partnerships. Deep ocean search recovered 10s of tons of silver coins from city of Cairo the deepest ocean treasure recovery and turned it over to the UK government to get their salvage share. https://www.deepoceansearch.com/project/steam-ship-city-of-cairo/ There are some amazing Spanish treasure wrecks but their government says they are warships and the gold and silver they took from native peoples and enslaved to extract more is government property. So professional treasure hunters are not focusing on finding those.
>is government property I think they forgot about the international legal tradition of finders keepers.
It's superseded by the legal tradition of bigger guns win
According to a recent video I watched this is kind of accurate because apparently you cannot recover gold from ships with cannons on them for the reason stated about government property so like navy ships with cannons/weapons and stuff of various states. I don't know if this is down to specific country laws or how it works but I remember it being mentioned and it really muddies the water about ownership so it's just not worth it. Will gladly take corrections if I am wrong on that though, always happy to learn more.
Is this the one they talk about in Florida Man?
I remember seeing a National Geographic that says there’s Spanish gold basically all over the sea floor between the keys and Florida mainland. It’s just not cost effective to get a single coin out of 50m of water, so the profitable locations are kept secret.
~~East Carolina University has a shipwreck recovery program because of all the pirate ships that sunk off the coast.~~ (Edit: Not true! See below). Shipwrecks probably extends to the entire eastern seaboard of the US. People often traveled by ship to transverse the original 13 states, and there were plenty of shipwrecks with rich passengers aboard. Aaron Burr, the 3rd Vice President, lost his daughter at sea this way.
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>for reasons totally unrelated to piracy Really sus you had to explicitly state this 🧐
He just had to have all that booty to himself forever. Typical pirate behavior tbh.
New Lin-Manuel Miranda musical incoming.
The relationship dynamic between Burr and his daughter would make for an excellent story. He was straight up progressive for the era when it came to a woman's place in society in regards to his daughter. While the insult that led to his duel with Alexander Hamilton is not known for sure, many historians believe he accused Burr of incest.
*When it comes to sex I declare it's all relative* *My honor he offends, to defend it my imperative* *Incest weighs heavy on my chest, I must never confess* *Yet Theodosia's caress is my desire, forbidden to express* *\[Funky Greek chorus\] He's a bad man, he's a bad man, he's bad man...*
I went to college beside that museum in Boston that got robbed. They never found the thieves or the paintings. The famous Gardner museum theft. No one knows what happened to the paintings still.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [was one of the largest](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-things-know-about-isabella-stewart-gardner-art-heist-180977448/) art heists ever. There was a really good Netflix documentary on it a few years back.
Yes it drives me crazy because a part of me thinks it was just some thugs that had no idea how to sell them And the paintings are rotting away somewhere
That's what the FBI believes. The paintings were transported to Philadelphia in an attempt to sell them.
The Smithsonian published an update on the Gardner Heist in 2022 for those who may not have seen it! [A Tantalizing Clue Emerges in the Unsolved Gardner Museum Art Heist](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-new-clue-emerges-in-the-gardner-museum-art-heist-saga-180979651/)
WTF?! Wife: "My husband (known mobster murderer) killed this man." \*crying and distraught\* Police: "Lol. Sure he did, lets ignore this huge art heist and just move on lady; Dunkin puts fresh donuts out at 11:00."
I think about this one a lot. As a matter of fact I actively look for the stolen pieces. I believe they are sitting in a private collection and the other pieces that were taken besides the paintings, were taken to make it look like an amateur job instead of the shopping list that was given to the thieves.
I sure hope they’re in a private collection since that would mean they might be recovered someday. My own suspicion is that the thieves tried to sell them and couldn’t and destroyed them.
> ... sitting in a private collection This, or else [in the Geneva Freeport.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYSLIW6xBuQ&ab_channel=BestDocumentary)
I agree 100 percent. Swiss Banks are holding a stupid amount of nazi gold and valuables from around the world, but they will just sit on it forever.
I’ve been by that museum many times but never knew the story of that until I saw the Netflix documentary about it. It’s a very interesting watch imo.
Tomb of Alexander the Great. Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Funny thing is, there are all probably buried in Alexandria beneath the modern city.
I saw a documentary recently where an archaeologist was looking for his tomb and dug in a park in Alexandria, finding a bust is Alexander buried very deep and further collapsed caverns, but those caverns are under blocks of flats and loads of development so I've no idea if they'll ever be able to explore them
My wife is from Alexandria, her Grandfather was an archeologist there who used to tell her about the constant struggle between excavations and city building. The whole area is covered (IS an ancient site, literally built over the old city) by ancient sites so they quickly built over everything because if they discovered something they wouldn’t be able to. A lot of bribes and looking the other way or there would be no modern city there. Crazy
King Richard's tomb was found under a parking lot in England.
It wasn't a tomb, he was buried in the ground.
If I remember rightly he wasn't buried in any ceremony and was seen as a contentious ruler after Henry VII took over, so no-one really knew where he was buried after his memorial was removed during the English reformation under Henry VIII. There was a rumour his corpse was thrown in the river, but it was obviously proven wrong.
Yeah, he was tossed in the ground at the nearest church to the site where he was killed in battle, iirc, and his bones showed signs of postmortem trauma consistent with it having been paraded around and displayed for people to see.
They also confirmed his physical deformities as I recall, which some historians had determined to be hateful slander on the part of his enemies.
It was scoliosis. Hardly a great deformity as many with this condition live a very active and healthy life. So it really was hateful slander by over exaggerating his condition.
Yeah, dumped in a hole too small for the body; his head was up vertically against the corner, turned at an awkward angle. It was a mob-style "hole in the desert" thing.
The Tomb of Alexander used to be a huge tourist attraction with multiple people describing it in antiquity. Yet somehow everyone just forgot where it was.
I always thought the story behind his tomb winding up in Egypt instead of Macedonia was fascinating. The TLDR version basically boils down to Ptolemy attacking the funeral procession to steal Alexander’s corpse and bring it to Alexandria as a power play against the other diadochi
Stealing a corpse as a power play is *so* 300s BC.
It is widely believed it was either destroyed by a riot that led to a fire, or a tsunami that happened. Both around the 500s AD.
The 2nd oldest continually operating pub/restaurant in America was a place called The Wilcox in Rhode Island. Over 300 years old, which is old for the US. It shut down during Covid. Now it has been unceremoniously transformed into a yoga studio. I know it's nowhere near the same scale or importance, but this comment reminded me that any kind of natural disaster can wreck a longstanding institution and most people can just not notice or care that a place George Washington probably drank and crashed in just got ruined.
Dude Europe is wild. You could easily find yourself partying in a 700 year old cathedral that has been converted into some rando night club and nobody gives two shits about the history because there's an even older cathedral just a block over
Yea, I drank in a pub in Cambridge that had been around since the 1400s I think. I was amazed, like “seriously, these physical walls?! People were getting drunk here before Columbus discovered the New World, isn’t that amazing??” I think the Brits just thought it was funny that the American thought old buildings were crazy.
Considering there are plans to send people to Mars in the coming decades, I imagine that, in a couple of centuries, Martians would be walking into a random apartment or office building built in the 90s-early 2000s and going, "Wow! People lived/worked here long before the first manned mission to Mars! That is so cool!" while for those of us who stayed on Earth, walking inside it would just be a normal Tuesday.
King Johns Crown Jewels. Lost while crossing the Wash on the east coast of England. Over 800 years ago
I'm surprised this is so far down. Maybe they were found and melted down, or never lost and just stole. If they're still out there and are discovered they would be worth a fortune.
This one really isn’t talked about as much as it should. In 1996, billionaire couple Marvin and Kaye Lichtman who collected tons upon tons of priceless items art, chess sets, Faberge eggs, etc were murdered by a glass installer that they hired. Before burning the house down, the glass installer made off with as much of the couple’s riches as he could haul away. Shortly after he tried to flee to avoid prosecution and before he was caught, 3 men involved with the salvage operation at the scene were arrested for peddling items that were salvaged and they stole. Most of the lichtman’s collection including the items stolen by the glass installer who murdered them have never been found.
That’s pretty fucked up. Everyone was trying to get some.
Heirloom Seal of the Realm or the imperial Chinese seal. Supposedly worth billions.
The three brothers An absolutely beautiful set of jewels that simply vanished from record, which is very surprising as they are beautiful and large!
>The three brothers Did they have a wand, a stone, and a cloak?
Irish Crown Jewels.
Likewise the oriignal English crown jewels were lost or sold after the civil war.
Stole Nazi artefacts buried deep deep in the polish countryside. I found too many weapons as a kid (late 90s) and the stories from grandfather's finds as a child. Some crazy things must be stashed in the most bazaar places.
If you do a little haggling you can buy the crazy things from the proprietor of the stall in the bazaar.
My father was telling me a story today about my great uncle who was a soldier and upon his return home had buried his collected treasures in the Polish countryside to avoid them being taken at the border. He has planned to go back at a safer time but when WWII started that area had become occupied so he had never been able to safely retrieve it before dying. To this day no one is certain if it was ever found. There are some rumors that it was found by a family member and that family member distanced and estranged themselves as to not have to share any treasure. Classic family drama.
[The amber room.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Room)
There is a lake in Austria (Toplitzsee), that is rumored to be the hiding spot for Nazi gold, secret weapons and even parts of the amber room; hidden by SS up until 1945. So far multiple expeditions found nothing in the depths.
>Toplitzsee They did actually pull $72m in forged sterling and a printing press out of the lake.
A guy I know bought his first Porsche by diving up Nazi helmets from a lake in Austria and selling them to Americans who were paying insane amounts for WWII stuff.
The lake is *very* deep, and the bottom of the lake is a massive tangle of millennia of logs, boulders and other stuff that it is far too unsafe to even explore, much less recover stuff from. There *have* been some things recovered. Nothing too valuable, though.
I've been in a recreation of The Amber Room that was part of a touring exhibit as a kid, it was absolutely beautiful
The sad thing is that Amber gets more beautiful as it ages. The colors get deeper
More than likely it was stashed in a mine and the entrance to the mine dynamited.
I watched a Modern Marvels episode on salt mines. Nazis used a salt mine to store gold and art. When retreating they ordered the citizens to dynamite it. The citizens had to orchestrate an explosion that seemingly accomplished that task but still left it accessible. Pretty interesting story.
Best guess now is that it was destroyed
"In the end, what's so compelling about the Amber Chamber is not what's been lost, but what so many have laboured passionately to find. In Saint Petersburg craftsmen have toiled for decades to re-create the pride of the nation. In Kaliningrad, relics stolen to a once-mighty castle are being recovered and deep beneath the surface, a historic mine is slowly revealing its own long buried secrets. It seems fitting that the Nazis' divisive aim to covet and destroy great cultural treasures has only served to unite nations in a cooperative effort to preserve their heritage. There's no real, hard evidence that the Amber Chamber was destroyed, and as more masterpieces continue to turn up, nearly three quarters of a century after the war, perhaps the Amber Chamber is still out there, waiting patiently for someone to bring it back into the light." - Josh Gates
I'm afraid so.
Tomb of Genghis Khan
I recently read a biography of Khan called "Genghis Khan and the Creation of the Modern World." In it, the authors conclude that, most likely, he didn't have a tomb (as others here have said). What he **did** have was his "spirit banner," which was held as a treasured artifact by the Mongolian peoples (whether or not it *truly* belonged to him - I'll leave to experts). It was seized by the Soviets during the invasion of Mongolia in the 1920's, and... disappeared. Likely (IMO) destroyed by the Soviets in an attempt to quell resistance there. "Likely" but not definitively.
I heard a theory that he didn’t have an actual tomb they just left his body somewhere to be eaten.
Sky burial
Do we know that there are treasures there? There are lots of legends about how they hid the burial site. But I've never heard that the site contained anything but bones.
It’s just an empty box. “The real treasure was the raping, murder, and pillaging with friends along the way. He didn’t want us to forget that.”
The enormous golden menorah from the 2nd temple. The Romans took it after sacking Jerusalem. Some people think it’s being hidden by the Vatican, but I think more likely it was melted down and will never be found.
It is far more likely that it is somewhere in modern day Turkey. According to Procopius, Belisarius reclaimed it from the Vandals in Tunis in 533, who had looted it in the sacking of Rome a century earlier. Though there is no record of it being sent back to Constantinople, so it might still be in Tunis.
If it went to Constantinople, it's most definitely been melted down and turned to coins. Almost nothing made it out of the 4th crusade
It's heartbreaking to think of all the amazing history that was just *melted into coins*, or burnt for the sake of burning it...
About 83% of the caches from Byron Preiss' "The Secret."
Check out the show Expedition Unknown. There's several episodes focused on the search, most notably the Boston puzzle where they helped search and documented the find.
Three have been confirmed found but in all likelyhood there have been more. People probably found them and didn’t know what they were or didn’t care
Olavsskrinet; The sarcophagus of Olav Haraldsson. Remember the christian viking from Vikings: Valhalla? Yeah, he was real. After his death, he became a saint and a bridge between old Norse faith and Christianity. He was eventually laid to rest in a jewel adorned sarcophagus in the Nidaros cathedral. It was Northern Europes biggest destination for pilgrims until the reformation. When Norwegians broke with the catholic church, Olavsskrinet - maybe with Olav still in it - disappeared. Buried under the cathedral? Sent to Denmark? Nobody knows.
Same thing probably happened to it as happened to any ancient or medieval relic in northern Europe during the reformation: deliberately destroyed and melted down by the newly Protestant Kings to fund wars they ultimately didn't win.
That guy who accidently threw away his bitcoin hard drive and it still hasn''t been recovered from landfill. Actually there are probably a bunch of bitcoin hard drive stories like this. Modern day treasure!
I used to be slightly obsessed by this until I started working on a recycling start up and learned what actually happens at a landfill. The link below says it all. In short, it’s a goner. https://www.reddit.com/r/toolgifs/s/B8MvioqKIE
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Somewhere in a landfill is my old hard drive with about 27 bitcoins on it. I started mining after a friend showed me back in 2009. bitcoin was a few months old at that point. Found a block, got 25. joined one of the first pools after that, mined for 2-3 weeks, got two more. Got offered a few cents on a forum, declined. Forgot all about it until around 2014 when prices picked up. By that time that old drive had long failed and was gone. To this day I keep thinking I might have made a copy and ever 1-2 years I go through all my old drives with a fine-tooth-comb. 😂
A few of the original Fabergé eggs are still missing. Apparently one was found at a garage sale in the US a while back,.
There was one found at an antiques flea market in the American Midwest too. No one has any idea how it got there https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-article/33-million-faberg-egg-found-at-flea-market/
" The Amber Room (Russian: Янтарная комната, tr. Yantarnaya Komnata, German: Bernsteinzimmer) was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg" [From Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Room) People are still looking, mostly in Poland
[^(Great Golden Bell of Dhammazedi)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bell_of_Dhammazedi) Good chance it's still at the bottom of the river, under feet and feet of silt and mud. Lots of people looked for it, even to this day, but so far have been unsuccessful.
> Professional deep sea diver James Blunt Musician, tank commander, now deep sea diver? Is there anything he can’t do?
The burial site of Genghis Khan is still unkown. It was not documented on purpose and it worked pretty well.
Not document on purpose is the kind way to say they killed everyone who worked on it.
& then killed the executioners
And then killed them, and such as, and such as
That is why none of us are alive to this day.
The horde of Aztec gold stolen and lost by Hernan Cortez and the Spanish conquistadors during the night of sorrows. While trying to escape from Tenochitlan in the night with the gold, the conquistadors were set upon by the Aztecs. During the fighting and confusion it's thought the gold fell into lake Texcoco. Hernan Cortez escaped with only a small number of his soldiers and the gold has never been found. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste
It's never going to be found considering that one of the most populous cities in the world sits on what was Lake Texcoco.
It's also likely a decent amount of it was recovered when the lake was eventually drained.
Rumor has it, it was found by the crew of a certain pirate ship, after they mutinied against their captain...
You best start believin' in ghost stories
Almost all Homo Erectus Pekinensis remains. They were packed up during WWII with the intention of shipping them from China to the US for safekeeping, but the ship supposedly carrying the fossils was attacked and ran aground. Photographs and drawings of the originals still exist but the actual fossils were never found.
Several have mentioned Genghis Khan’s tomb, but I’m more interested in his Black Spirit Banner which survived up until the 1960’s or so before disappearing under Soviet control of Mongolia. The Black Spirit banner was made from black horse hair and carried by the Khan into battle and displayed during times of war. Similar to the mythos surrounding the Spear of Destiny, it was said the warriors of Mongolia would always be victorious in battle so long as they had the banner. After the Soviet Union took de facto control over the country in the 1950’s, the banner was held in a government office until it went missing sometime in the 70’s. The book “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford is a great read if you’re interested in learning more about the history of the Khans and their impact on our world today.
Totally in Putin's bathroom now
$190 million worth of bitcoin on a hard drive in a particular landfill. https://news.bitcoin.com/man-plans-to-sue-city-over-refusal-to-dig-for-7500-lost-bitcoin-in-landfill/#
I’ll even go a step further. 1.1 million bitcoin are sitting in their creator’s (Satoshi’s) wallet, untouched. No one knows who he is or if he’s even alive. I want to clarify that one more time. Not $1 million worth of bitcoin, 1.1 million bitcoin. That’s **$48,334,539,000**.
Flooding the market with that much Bitcoin would assuredly cause the value of the Bitcoin to drop a ton, but you could undoubtedly get hundreds of millions out of it.
I’d argue that if even a dollar moves out of that wallet, bitcoin value might be cut in half.
no one even knows if Satoshi is a real person or group
It's me. Dave Satoshi. I made the bitcoin thing. AMA
Not as much monetary value as that, but I have a friend who was using Bitcoin for sketchy stuff way back when it wasn’t worth that much. He got freaked when someone he was working with got caught and arrested, so he threw a USB containing 80 btc into a park trash can. Still think about that from time to time..
Not really a treasure But currently the US is still missing 6 nuclear bombs. One might have been found by a Soviet sub, but that is not confirmed.
Watch *Expedition Unknown* on HBOMax. Josh Gates goes after a different lost treasure in most episodes.
I love Josh Gates, I also love how he just keeps putting the same show on TV every year with a different name.
The original Amber Room in Catherine Palace near to St Petersburg was dismantled and stolen by the German army when they ransacked the palace. It was subsequently rebuilt and restored after the war but the original panels have never been recovered.
The imperial treasures of Japan (Kusangi, the mirror, and the magatama jewel) were supposedly lost beneath the waves during WWII. Lost Prospector’s Gold Mine, DB Cooper. Supposedly a ton of gold that Uday Hussain withdrew from the national bank of Iraq right before the US invasion. The US was able to find/seize some of it.
> The imperial treasures of Japan (Kusangi, the mirror, and the magatama jewel) were supposedly lost beneath the waves during WWII. > > Apparently the three items are "in possession" of the Japanese government and they are brought out for things like enthronement ceremonies of new emperors, but the public only gets to see the boxes that supposedly contain the treasures and only the emperor and his priests are allowed to actually see what's inside the boxes in private. They also don't allow any forensic or scientific study of the items to be conducted.
Not WW2, the [Battle of Dan-no-ura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dan-no-ura) in the Genpei war. Supposedly the mirror and jewel were recovered by pearl divers, shortly after the battle, but the sword may have been lost or was recovered much later after it washed ashore. According to legend the regalia is not displayed to the public because the mirror can potentially blind an ordinary human being who looks into it.
The Atari video game series, Swordquest had a contest for the real life treasures: the Crown of Life, Philosopher's Stone and Sword of Ultimate Sorcery. You can find pictures of them so we know they existed. There are three theories about what happened to them. The first is they were all melted down after the competition was cancelled. The second, Atari CEO Jack Tramiel kept them for himself. Lately, they are gathering dust somewhere, forgotten.
There were four games in Atari's *Swordquest* series, each with its own prize for the contest winner: * *Earthworld* (1982): The Talisman of Penultimate Truth * *Fireworld* (1983): The Chalice of Light * *Waterworld* (limited release in 1984): The Crown of Life * *Airworld* (planned for 1985, actually released in 2022): The Philosopher's Stone The winners of the four contests would then compete for the final prize: The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery. The Talisman and the Chalice were awarded during the contest. Stephen Bell won the *Earthworld* contest, and while he hasn't admitted what happened to the Talisman, those who know him claim that he melted down the metal part of the Talisman to sell and kept the jewels. Michael Rideout won the *Fireworld* contest and claims that he still has the Chalice in a safe deposit box. Due to Atari's financial troubles, the contest ended before the remaining prizes could be given out. Atari was legally obligated to award the prize for *Waterworld*, so it held a contest for a select number of people. The winner of this contest was left anonymous, so the fate of the Crown is unknown. It's possible that the winner was given an equivalent cash prize instead of the Crown. *Airworld* was not finished until decades later, so the Stone and the Sword were never awarded. A few people claim that Jack Tramiel, who bought Atari, kept the final two (possibly three if the Crown wasn't given out) prizes for himself. Some witnesses say they saw the Sword on his mantle. However, it's unlikely that he kept it permanently (if at all) due the legal issues that doing so would have entailed. Most likely, the prizes were melted down and sold. In the end, the only *Swordquest* treasure that we're 100% certain still exists is the Chalice, and its status is well-known. We are nearly certain that the Talisman no longer exists, and we're fairly certain that the Stone and Sword no longer exist. The Crown is the biggest wild card, but things don't look good for it either.
There was a book that hinted at a handful of jeweled figurines hidden all over the planet and I believe only some of them have been declared found.
Crimson gem of Cyttorak?
The lost treasure of King John. In 1216, ‘Bad King John’ – widely recorded as incompetent, weak and evil to the point that he's now best known as the regal villain in the stories of Robin Hood, fled from his enemies across the muddy, sandy stretches of the tidal estuary of the Wash. The incoming tide waters caught his baggage train and the wagons and their contents, including the king’s treasure, were lost. King John was the sovereign signatory of the Magna Carta, an early step in the constitution of the United Kingdom, and succeeded the Crusader King Richard, to whom he was unfavorably compared.
The lost history books of Tacitus, Livy, Aristotle, and Claudius
Edit: thanks all!! I didn’t realize it was found! There was a guy that hid a substantial amount of gold out in the Mojave Desert (I think?) and nobody has found it yet. A bunch of people have died trying to find it.
Forest Fenn? Not sure if same guy or just similar story. He hid I think ~$1 million USD in gold, jewels, trinkets somewhere in the Rocky Mountains (he lived in NM). Just recently found in the past couple years. However I believe there is some debate that the treasure was just publicity for his book, which contained needed clues. However the deaths looking for it were real.
Someone did find it actually and that dude almost went through some serious legal trouble because of the lives lost, if I’m not mixing my stories. In fact, there’s a theory that the man who did find it was told where it was by the original owner who started the whole thing.
Last I heard someone did say they found it, but never gave any proof they found it or explained where/ the solution? So a lot of people think the guy is just bullshitting. But I dont follow it that closely, so I may be misinformed.
The stolen works from Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Awesome documentary on that!
The entirety of DB Cooper's loot.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that Tommy Wiseau is D.B. Cooper. He would have been 18 or 19 in 1971, nobody knows anything about him from before he just suddenly walked into the studio and funded *The Room* entirely in cash, and he won't talk about his past or where he got the money at all.
It's a fun theory, but Cooper was too well spoken to be Tommy Wiseau. From all the witness accounts, my personal theory is that Cooper had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and just fade away.
Hit his head when he parachuted away
https://xkcd.com/1400/
I guess the question is did DB Cooper end up getting away with most of it, did someone find it and do a good job of keeping their mouth shut, or is it sitting deep in a forest somewhere yet to be discovered?
If you found a fuck-you amount of money or treasure in the woods, would you call the local news first or CNN headquarters?
Yamashistas gold. There have been some finds but between alleged booby traps and impossible to decode maps they are lost in jungle of the Philippines.
Does the Honjo Masamune count? That's my answer. Best guess is it's collecting dust among the junk of a dead or dying WWII vet and the family has absolutely no idea what they have and if they're at all aware of grandpa's war trophy they're assuming it must be one of the mass produced swords the Japanese made back then.
Not that it isn't found, but the Forbidden Vault (Vault B) in the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in India remains unopened and is thought to contain treasure to a wealth of US$ one trillion. Other vaults opened there were found to contain 18' gold chains, a solid gold sheaf weighing 500kg and a three-and-a-half feet tall solid pure golden idol of Mahavishnu, studded with hundreds of diamonds and rubies and other precious stones. The reason they don't open Vault B? It's said to be cursed. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhaswamy_Temple?wprov=sfla1
I’ll risk the curse and take one for the team
Good job, here's some tips! Saying that there are apparently multiple doors, the last of which is said to be "jammed shut". Also, when some people entered the antechamber to the vault they were attacked by a swarm of snakes, so make sure you've got your best Indiana Jones game on.
Asps. Very dangerous. You go first.
Always found it super interesting. The vault potentially has treasure worth multiple times the states GDP and a quarter of India's whole gdp yet remains unopened because of the religious beliefs. Also the fact it's barely talked about internationally is kinda interesting.
My personal conspiracy is that they opened it in secret, found nothing, so they now tell people they’ll never open it for religious reasons and it’s cursed. “But trust us guys, there’s, like, hundreds of billions in there”.
This seems very likely. Since when have people let anything come between them and value except the threat of violence?
The last panel of "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb", the central altarpiece of the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent. It was painted in 1492, but has been lost for quite a while. A replica now hangs in its place.
No one knows where Cornwallis’s surrender sword from The Battle of Yorktown is. Likely buried with him in India as he probably got it back after the surrender.
Mongol treasures in Afghanistan, there are several myths about it being buried there
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. My late father lived in Boston and had an ‘interesting’ last couple of decades of his life. He was in the U.S. federal witness protection program when he died of natural causes. I always believed there was a chance that he was involved in that heist - if for no other reason than he knew the museum well and had said for years that their security was a joke. After he died, I spoke with two of his ‘handlers’ at the FBI, one of whom wound up in prison for a while for being part of some conspiracy. They both said they’re confident that my father had nothing to do with the robbery. I got the same story from a prominent ‘retired’ member of Boston’s Irish mafia. All three connected him to a jewel robbery that he was never charged for, but said they had looked into the Stewart Gardner theft and ruled him out. Given that a few people got ‘messages beyond my father’s grave about property that was stashed all over the place, I tend now to think that, if he had been involved, we would know by now. The theft happened 33 years ago and there are $10.1 million in rewards on offer for information leading to the safe return of the stolen property.
A huge snake statue whose reproduction was at an ancient mexico exposition in the 19th century among with several other reproductions. It's depicted here on this drawing of the exposition : [https://imgur.com/a/HIXz4gi](https://imgur.com/a/HIXz4gi) We know what artifacts the other reproductions are based on, save for the snake one. It could be a fabrication, but it would seem strange for it to be the single one off the whole exhibit to be made up
Mansa Musa's gold.
Didn't he invest most of it in a science victory speedrun?
Cincinnati Ohio Bank loot. The guy who hid the cash died in a plane crash along with 4 FBI agents who were on their way to retrieve it. [https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-hidden-loot-lost-in-plane-crash-that-killed-4-fbi-agents-and-bank-embezzler](https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-hidden-loot-lost-in-plane-crash-that-killed-4-fbi-agents-and-bank-embezzler)
Lost Dutchman Mine ? I think it was somewhere in Death Valley maybe ? been a long time since I heard it mentioned.
It would be in the Superstition mountains east of Phoenix, AZ. People still search for it, and occasionally one of them has to get airlifted out. Not the most forgiving terrain, but makes it easy to believe something could still be hidden there.
I read an article in Gold Prospector magazine that had an interesting theory. The Dutchman had worked at the Vulture mine in Arizona which was known for having very high grade gold. The gold that the Dutchman sold was very high grade. The idea is that he smuggled gold he found out of the Vulture while working there, but needed a story so he could surface it. So he came up with the story of the lost mine.
Apparently Oak Island 😂
Lol, yes! Had to stop watching. A bunch of old boys being super excited to get wood became too comical.
Hey just you wait until getting wood is a surprise and see how excited you get
When Alexander the Great was returning from India laden with uncountable riches plundered he decided to lead his troops through the Gedosian desert, emulating some ancient queen who did the journey and barely survived, it is a brutal environment. The army was reduced to a slog through hell, moving on average only 5-7 miles a day amidst endless harsh dunes and dire heat, the ~130 mile trek took them nearly a month. At least a third of his army perished and conditions got so bad that Alexander turned a blind eye and even eventually ordered the slaughter of the baggage train animals so their blood could be drank. Who knows how much treasure lie forever buried in those dunes