Hidden treasures

01

Amber Room

Nazis stripped a room of six tons of amber panels in 1941; eighty years of excavations, tunnels, and deathbed confessions have recovered nothing. Where do you hide a room?

02

Yamashita's gold

Rogelio Roxas claimed to have found General Yamashita's buried hoard and showed a golden Buddha to prove it; he was then arrested, tortured, and died in custody. The gold has never appeared.

03

Sutton Hoo helmet

Dug from a Suffolk garden in 1939, the Sutton Hoo helmet's iron face-mask — with its dragon-eyebrow crest — belonged to a king whose name no one can agree on.

04

Nuestra Señora de Atocha

Mel Fisher searched 16 years for the Nuestra Señora de Atocha; three days before his crew found 40 tons of silver, his son Kane drowned when a salvage boat capsized.

05

Treasure of Lima

In 1820, Captain William Thompson was handed Peru's entire church treasury — 113 gold religious statues included — sailed away, and was never reliably seen again. Cocos Island has been dug 300 times.

06

Copper Scroll

Inscribed on a sheet of copper rolled up with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll lists 64 treasure locations holding tons of gold and silver. Scholars dispute whether any of it was real.

07

Flor de la Mar

When the Flor de la Mar sank off Sumatra in 1511, it took four elephant-loads of Malaccan royal gold with it — the largest prize Afonso de Albuquerque ever seized. The wreck's location remains disputed.

08

Hoxne Hoard

Eric Lawes borrowed a metal detector to find a lost hammer in a Suffolk field and instead turned up 15,234 Roman coins, still in their wooden chest. The hammer was found too.

09

Saddle Ridge Hoard

A California couple walking their dog in 2013 spotted a rust-rimmed tin can; eight cans later they had 1,427 gold coins dating to 1847–1894, face value $27,980, auction value $10 million.

10

Staffordshire Hoard

Terry Herbert swept a Staffordshire field for five days in 2009 and pulled up 3,500 pieces of Anglo-Saxon war-gold — sword fittings, helmet strips, a golden cross — all buried without a single coin.