This past week, anticipation of untold riches was rampant. The Mega Millions lottery jackpot eclipsed $1 billion. No matter how much they might deny it, when it gets to that level, people of all walks conjure dreams about their numbers being picked. Even those who didn’t play the lottery imagined what they would do with those winnings.
Others are more proactive about such things. They understand that doing and digging is often more profitable than hoping and waiting. There’s no better time than summer for such aspirations. Especially for kids on vacation, it’s the perfect season for building castles in the sky with riches that “just have to be out there.”....
An optimistic group in Finland has been hoping for their own castle through an ancient cache of gold and jewels known as the Lemminkainen Hoard, said to be worth 20 times the recent lottery. Since 1987, they group has been scouring caves a few dozen miles east of Helsinki for a $20 billion treasure. Said to date back thousands of years, if the hoard of gems and life-size golden statues exists, it would be the most valuable treasure ever uncovered. Though they’ve been toiling for 35 years, the group believes they are “just meters away.” Hope springs eternal.
In nearby Denmark an amateur treasure hunter had almost instant success when he turned on his metal detector. The first time Ole Ginnerup Schytz went out with his detector he activated it and swung it to one side. It immediately beeped.
Schytz picked up a mud clod. Inside was what appeared to be a gold-colored “lid from a can of herring.” After washing it off he uncovered a gold pendant with cryptic symbols and images. It proved to be an ornament worn by women between 300 to 700 AD for “protection.” Moments later, he found more – 22 gold medallions in all - weighing over two pounds of gold. A coin found in the hoard dates to Viking times. Much like items buried in the United States, troves were stashed to protect them from invaders and thieves.
A connection to recent topical news turned up last year when a hoard of gold and silver coins and jewelry dating to 1105 was uncovered in Poland. One of the gold rings included the engraving "Lord, may you help your servant Maria," in Cyrillic. It’s thought to have been worn by Dobroniega Maria, daughter of the Prince of Kiev – yes, that Kiev.
Naturally, the historic and numismatic value of all these items far eclipses their gold and silver bullion values. What’s enticing is the clear fact that more is waiting to be found, if we just take the time to look a little closer.
Of course, such valuable finds involve research and hard work. Most often, just like losing lottery tickets, those efforts go unrewarded. For the past few years, there has been the prospect of substantial riches uncovered by armchair hunters, postal patrons and stamp collectors.
This treasure comes in the form of a sheet of six small $2.00 stamps worth as much as $50,000. The stamps commemorate the storied 24-cent Air Mail stamp issued in 1918 featuring a flying bi-plane. Back then, one of the sheets of 100 of stamps, was accidentally placed on the printing press upside-down. That resulted in the airplane on the stamp being inverted.
The error stamp sheet sent shockwaves through the collecting world. Today, just one of those stamps can be worth upwards of $500,000.
A few years ago, the USPS reissued those inverted stamps in a small sheet of six. Instead of 24-cents, each had a face value of $2.00. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of sheets of those upside-down versions, a mere100 sheets were produced with the airplane right-side-up. According to nationally recognized stamp dealer Mark Eastzer, just one of those modern rarity sheets now commands between $25,000 and $50,000.
Here’s the kicker… according to Eastzer, barely half the 100 sheets have been found. The others are still out there in the sealed envelopes. Because all the sheets are sealed in envelopes, until opening it, buyers don’t know if is one of the rare sheets or not. Even if it isn’t, the nice consolation is that buyers still have six $2.00 stamps usable as postage.
Maybe they aren’t gold medallions or rare coins, but they are rare and valuable – and out there. The sheets can still be purchased online at www.USPS.com.
For more collecting advice, visit www.PRexford.com