A few years ago, during the banking crisis, a person was given some very poor advice. He was told that ‘if a bank went bust, anything in a deposit box would be lost’. Unfortunately he believed this and immediately withdrew his valuables. He then had an idea. If he buried some of the valuables in his mother in laws garden they would be safe and easily recovered when required. A good plan with only one slight drawback! It is necessary remember precisely where the object was buried. This is where I come in.
Earlier this year I received a call asking if I would help by trying to find the item with the aid of my trusty Minelab X-TERRA 705 metal detector. Of course, I was only too pleased to assist. When I arrived at the location I immediately observed what at one time had been a nice lawn in front of the 17th century cottage. The owner of the valuable item had been digging – and digging.
A Tommy from the Somme would have felt at home. There were holes everywhere. He told me that when the item was initially buried it had been lined up between a tree and a birdbath. I noticed a problem; although the tree was fixed in one position, the birdbath was free standing and I discovered that it was moved every time the lawn was mowed. As a result the location of the valuable was lost.
I started searching over a large section of ex-lawn when the person had been digging around for days. Almost immediately I located a horse harness buckle, quickly followed by a 2p coin. Then I received a signal for an obviously large item. I dug it out and was surprised by seeing a package wrapped in a yellow plastic bag. The owner saw this and became very excited. I had found it. He asked me to unwrap the parcel, and I slowly undid the numerous layers of protective plastic. I still did not know what I had recovered. Eventually I saw it. In my hand I was holding an ingot of pure gold. The weight – ONE KILOGRAM. Even I got the shakes.
In my grubby paw I was holding £35000 - £40000 of gold. The ingot was about the size of a pack of playing cards. The owner at this point exclaimed, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting that. I thought I had buried the Krugerrands!”
The pleased and relieved owner of the ingot could not thank me enough, and offered a reward and as a result a local charity received a very generous donation. This is the most valuable item I have ever recovered and it is always a pleasure to reunite a person with the lost valuables. Usually a lost wedding ring or sets of keys.
We all read about those hidden hoards and this gives a bit of an insight as to how they became lost and never reclaimed by the owners. There is still one mystery though. The person concerned is confident he had not buried his Krugerrands in the garden; the trouble is he can’t remember what he did with them!
John - England, UK