ANOTHER SAN FRANCISCO TREASURE HUNT

Somewhere in San Francisco, buried one foot underground, rests a treasure chest filled with $1 coins — 10,000 of them, so many that the booty weighs 150 pounds.

In this city of exorbitant wealth, where a modest home can top $2 million, $10,000 is not life-changing. It might pay two or three months of rent. And who really wants to haul that many coins to the bank?

Nevertheless, people armed with shovels and maps fanned out across San Francisco this week determined to find the loot. In this high-tech city, the center of the artificial intelligence boom that could upend society, an old-timey adventure that required getting outside and digging in the dirt proved irresistible.

Baxter Zrob, 16, was sitting in his high school history class when his dad texted him a link to the hunt with two words: "It's on!"

Soon, he had skipped school and was at the old U.S. Mint building at Fifth and Mission Streets, squirreling through a hole in the wrought iron fence and digging in the garden area. But a barefoot woman injecting herself with a hypodermic needle on the steps yelled that he was causing a disturbance, and he reconsidered.

Scrapping the clue about "the mint," he instead landed on the words "heavenly island." Maybe, he said, the chest was buried at Angel Island. He was off to the Ferry Building to catch a boat.

From the gold seekers of 1849 to the dot-com entrepreneurs of the 1990s and 2000s to the A.I. masterminds of today, San Francisco has always been a place where enterprising people seek their riches.

And treasure hunts have long been part of the city's lore. Back in 1953, The San Francisco Chronicle launched the Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt — named for an eccentric city resident who, in 1859, declared himself "Norton 1, Emperor of the United States" and saw whimsical San Franciscans embrace him as their leader with a knowing wink.

For several years, the newspaper hosted the hunt, burying a medallion and printing clues until it was found. The medallion could be turned in at The Chronicle's headquarters for $1,000.

To read the complete article, see:
The Race Is On to Find the Treasure Buried in San Francisco (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/us/san-francisco-buried-treasure-chest.html)

 

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
THE 1953 EMPEROR NORTON GOLD MEDAL (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n50a11.html)
THE 1953 EMPEROR NORTON MEDALS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n14a21.html)
WITTER COIN 2026 SCAVENGER HUNT (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n16a20.html)

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