Treasure Wiki

David Cowley asked:


Sapphires have captivated people for thousands of years.  They seem so encapsulate wisdom somehow, or perhaps our own potential.  Somewhere in a pile of dirty gravel, there is a shining gem just waiting to be uncovered.  Sapphires come in a wide variety of colors, including blue, pink, orange, brown, clear, yellow and purple.  Why no red sapphires?  Well, they are called rubies.  There are many reasons to go sapphire treasure hunting.



Rubies are today still more valuable and rare than even the top quality colorless diamonds. One 16 carat ruby recently sold for $227,301 per carat in 1988.  A Ruby of five carats or more are particularly rare.  Ruby is composed of the mineral corundum, one of the most hardest minerals which exists.  It has a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale and is also extremely tough. It is even used as an abrasive.

Blue is considered the normal color of sapphires but they are also found in the full range of the color spectrum.  Trace amount of impurities like iron, titanium and chromium can give sapphires their blue, yellow, pink, brown, purple, orange, green and even black coloration.  Vary rarely some sapphires are found completely transparent (white).  Heating sapphires to 1800 Celsius for several hours can improve or enhance the natural color.  In the case of hazy or cloudy stone, heat treating will clean it up.  $20 per carat for cutting and polishing in addition to the $5 per carat for heat treating marginal stones is well worth the added expense.

Clear, cut and polished sapphires less than one carat with good color can be sold for $100 to $1,000 per carat.  One to four carat gemstones can go for as much as $2,000 to $5,000 per carat.

Logan Sapphire

The Logan Sapphire from Sri Lanka is one of the largest faceted gem-quality blue sapphires in the world and it weighs 422.99 carats.  It is currently on display at the Natural Museum of Natural History.

Star Sapphires

A sapphire that exhibits a star like light pattern when viewed with a single overhead light source is call a Star Sapphire.  These gemstones contain intersecting needle like inclusion that cause the appearance of the six rays, star shaped pattern.  The value of a star sapphire in dependent on the intensity of the star pattern in addition to the standard 4Cs grading system.

September Stories

If you were born in September, then you have a special reason to go sapphire treasure hunting.  That’s because any sapphire variety is your birthstone.  It’s also traditionally considered the birthstone for those born under the sun signs of Taurus, Pisces, Virgo and Sagittarius.  It is also the traditional gift for your 5 th and 45 th wedding anniversary.  If somehow you make it to your 65 th wedding anniversary, then the traditional gift is the rare and pleasantly peculiar star sapphire.

Perhaps you would want to go sapphire treasure hunting to attain the magical and healing powers that have been attributed to these special stones.  Sapphires are said to help a person’s latent abilities for astral projection, telepathy and clairvoyance.  Not only are they reputed to do that, but are also said to be helpful in curing colic, helping rheumatism, reducing fever (blue stones only) and easing various mental illnesses (no color preferences for that one).

Rock hounding

If you have ever wanted to uncover buried treasure, you are not alone.  There is a huge growing hobby called rock hounding or treasure hunting.  Some rock hounders will search for anything they can find, while some prefer to find particular things.  Many rock hounders use metal detectors, but they will not help you for sapphire treasure hunting.  You need screens, tweezers, picks and perhaps a magnifying glass. 

Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine

If you go to Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine in beautiful Spokane, Washington, then your chances for a successful sapphire treasure hunt are high.  This mine is extremely rich in sapphires.  If you can’t make it to Spokane, you can order a bucket of mine gravel from their website and can go sapphire treasure hunting in the comfort of your own home.  They guarantee a sapphire in each bucket.

All colors of sapphires have been found at Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine, including the rare rubies.  The most common color found is a blue-green.  Other semi-precious stones have been found occasionally, including topaz, citrine (yellow quartz), garnets and diamonds. 

For those of you who can’t make it to Washington, the sapphire mine transports sapphire gravel via UPS across the world.  We will dig, package and ship your own bucket of sapphire gravel to ‘mine’ from the comfort of your own living room.

Happy treasure hunting.

beanygirl asked:

Trailer of National Treasure

Steve Gillman asked:


It is true that treasure hunters know a few things the rest of us don’t usually know. They are familiar with common hiding places where people put their valuables and money, for example. They know the usual locations for buried treasure. More generally, they know that we humans like to hide things far more often than most suspect, and that many of us die without ever revealing to a soul what we have hidden or where.

Still, there is more to being a treasure hunter than having a bit of special knowledge. So if you want to start your own hunt for hidden and buried treasure, don’t think that reading a few books on the subject will be enough. You also have to develop the right mind set. Patience is a requirement, for example, or you’ll never dig up those fifty almost-worthless pennies just to finally find one old and valuable one.

You also have to think a certain way. You’ll need the ability to mentally put yourself in the past and also in the head of the person who hides something, in order to guess where it is buried or otherwise hidden. It will also help to habitually think about how to apply and expand what you learn from one treasure hunt to the next ones.

Secrets Of Treasure Hunters

To help along those lines, here are some of the ways to find treasure, the “tricks of the trade.” These examples each suggest something useful to apply in other areas. They are essentially short lessons from and for treasure hunters.

Hidden In Rivers

When we were children, my friends and I occasionally saw bicycles in rivers. We never really knew why they were there, but I later learned it was because rivers are easy places to hide things, very useful knowledge for thieves. They were likely stolen and dumped there. Criminals throw things off of bridges routinely, because it is a fast way to get rid of incriminating evidence.

I have read about one treasure hunter who makes a living from this criminal habit. With magnets and other tools he retrieves guns, money, and other things of value from the bottom of murky rivers. Using a tube with a window at the bottom (his own design) and a waterproof flashlight strapped to the outside, he pushes it down into the water to see clearly what is at the bottom. Someday you might see a person with a strange reverse periscope floating in his rowboat, and it may be this man.

To develop a treasure hunting mentality, you should be thinking about where you can try this and what else you can learn from the story. Perhaps a good waterproof metal detector could be used to locate valuables in rivers (most are waterproof up to a certain point anyhow). You should expand on the idea and ask yourself what other things get dropped in water and where – whether or not on purpose. Lake bottoms near docks might be a good place to search, for example.

Coffee Can Treasures

It has been and probably still is common to bury things in coffee cans out in the yard or behind the barn or wherever. You probably have heard of this, but have you ever thought about how to use that knowledge to find such stashes? Here’s one way: If you’re looking around an old house or homestead look for empty coffee cans in sheds or barns. They were possibly being saved to bury things in. Consider too that although paper money can’t be detected with a metal detector, the cans can be.

Then, as you look around the target area, consider where you would bury a can full of cash. Note where you could dig without being noticed, or where the ground is easier to dig up? What locations could be more easily remembered? Consider these things as if you are the one burying the valuables, and you’ll start to develop an intuition about where to search.

There are many more secrets to learn, but also develop the patience to keep searching. Mel Fischer searched sixteen years to find the “Atocha Mother Lode,” valued at $450 million dollars, so you can try for sixteen more minutes before setting down that metal detector. Learn your lessons from each search and think about how to apply and expand on what you learned. That’s how you develop the mind set of a treasure hunter.

 

Glady Reign asked:


Somewhere on the ocean floor lays a treasure chest full of $50,000 worth in pirate gold and a key to a all-new Volvo XC90. And enthusiasts around the world are finding ways to search for the sunken treasure…

The Volvo Car Corporation is calling all pirates, scallywags and treasure fanatics to join The Hunt – a competition in connection with the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which opens in theatres on May 25.

The Hunt, which has started on the 4th of this month, is the second in Volvo’s partnership with Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise. This will also be the first time the competition has been open to Canadians. Last year’s program was limited to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Spain and Austria. Now, the competition includes Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan and Thailand.

Where in the world did the Swedish automaker hide its treasure? Well, that is for participants to find out… The mystery thrills everyone… And it puffs out fumes of eagerness like the Volvo muffler. And the increasing breathtaking sensation makes the competition more intense. Tens of thousands of online treasure hunters across the globe vie to find a chest. To inspire, entertain, or even distract all would-be pirates on their quest for the treasure, Volvo offers up some other great watery mysteries from over the ages.

“Okay, okay. Maybe it is a stretch to call The Hunt one of the greatest mysteries of the deep, but it certainly has got a lot of people flummoxed,” said Linda Gangeri, the national advertising manager for Volvo Cars of North America. “We thought some of our more prodigious participants might enjoy pitting their wit and skill against some age-old mysteries… but even if they solve them, the only way to get your hands on Volvo’s treasure is by joining our Hunt!”

Just days after Volvo launched its latest treasure hunt, the company has revealed some spots where it did not sink the treasure. “Three-quarters of the earth’s surface is under water, so finding a sunken treasure chest is not going to be easy,” said Volvo’s Linda Gangeri. “We want our hunt to be challenging, but we don’t want participants to become discouraged, so we thought we’d help narrow the playing field by revealing places where ‘X’ doesn’t mark the spot.”

Some of the more rational sounding places where the treasures are not found include the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea, and Sea World. Even though the hunt started on 4 May, there is still time to join. Volvo is calling more participants aged 18 years and older to visit a Volvo retailer to pick up a special pirate chart then register at www.volvocars.com/thehunt any time between May 4 and May 29. The first person from each of the participating markets to finish the online hunt will compete against one another in one final online challenge June 2. To participate in the global head to head, players will be required to present an original pirate chart upon conclusion of The Hunt. Winners will only be eligible if they can produce the pirate chart.

Once registered, participants set sail on a virtual high seas adventure and receive clues as they solve a series of challenging and fun online puzzles. Enthusiasts can join The Hunt and can catch up with other participants if they correctly answer the puzzles posted online. As the contest progresses, the puzzles will become more and more hard to solve.

The first of those 22 individuals to solve the final puzzle will be named the winner and will receive a trip to the burial location to retrieve the chest filled with $50,000 in pirate gold and a key to a brand new Volvo XC90.

“Last summer, we held a treasure hunt to find a buried Volvo XC90 V8 to tie in with Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and were blown away by the success – more than 100,000 participants from around the world joined in,” said Linda Gangeri, national advertising manager for Volvo Cars of North America. “This year, with more countries, more booty and all the early interest, we’re really excited to set sail.’ So, come join The Hunt!”

Goldentusk asked:

An Indiana Jones Theme Song Parody, seventh in a series of Movie Theme Song Homages, sung to the tune of the One and Only March from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Photos from: http://www.pdfoto.com, http://www.imageafter.com, http://www.morguefile.com, http://www.bigfoto.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…, http://www.picfindr.com, http://pdphoto.org