Search request witheld for privacy concerns.

The Austin Metal Detecting Club's search team received a request to help find some gold coins, any treasure hunter's dream search. Sadly, the person that buried the coins had recently passed away, but two family members had been told about the coins and the general area in which they were buried.

The initial search produced several modern coins, a dog tag from the 1980's, a metal plant tag, a hose nozzle and of course, several bottle caps and pull tabs.

I next proceeded to a flower bed loaded with plants. I started swinging the coil over the plants, pressing down on the leaves and finally got a repeatable signal. The target was in the center of the plant, so I asked permission to dig through the stems and roots to retrieve the target.

After about 5 minutes of digging something gave and a couple of minutes later, a plastic canister, taped shut came out of the ground. It did not take long to peel the tape off and reveal 84 one ounce silver rounds and 1 five ounce silver round. Both family members were very excited, but were sure we should be finding gold coins.

Since I was not getting any signals, we decided to cut down all the plants in the flower bed. Less than 1 foot from the first cache, I got a weaker, but repeatable signal. This time I only had to deal with the plant below the ground, but the experience was the same and another canister popped out. The second one had 3 one ounce gold rounds, 12 Swiss 20 Franc gold coins and 20 more one ounce silver rounds.

Finding the silver canister first was a blessing since we might have stopped after finding the gold.

Dates on the rounds and a company name on the coin folders led the family members to the point and time of sale and they were able to confirm that we had found all of the items that had been purchased.

Is there more treasure to be found? . . . Only time will tell.

Scott Hegel