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2016 Jon Collins-Black went in search of treasure hidden by art dealer Forrest Fenn. He never found Fenn’s fortune, a pirate chest of gold coins and jewels buried for a decade. But Collins-Black fell in love with the thrill of the search.
“I’ve had the experience of trying to solve clues, going out into nature, getting away from the cell phone and the TV and just being outside looking for something,” he says. The Independent. “I realized how invigorating it was.”
Fen’s treasure was finally found in 2020 somewhere in the Rockies, around the time the world was in lockdown during the Covid pandemic. Stuck at home, Collins-Black began dreaming of creating his own treasure hunt, something that would pull people away from their screens and get them exploring the planet around them.
“We’re in a digital world and what I’ve put together is an analog adventure,” he says of his new book There is a treasure inside. “All you need is a book, some water and shoes.”
The treasure that Collins-Black has assembled far outstrips the stockpile of goodies that Fenn created. Collins-Black commissioned five unique puzzle boxes, which were scattered across the United States, four of similar size and then one larger box containing the lion’s share of the wealth.
Not only was Collins-Black fascinated by treasure hunting, but he had the means to amass a truly spectacular collection of valuables. He made his fortune selling a careers website that was big during the 2008 banking crisis. Bitcoin investments in 2013 “Due to the growth of cryptocurrency and the price of Bitcoin, my financial situation changed dramatically,” he explains. “So by 2020, when I started this project, I definitely had the means to do it right.”
Inspired to create what he describes as “Dungeons & Dragons dragon horde of gold and shiny objects,” Collins-Black first began buying gold bars and gems before broadening his search to idiosyncratic treasures that he hopes will appeal to many generations of treasure hunters. There’s a rare physical Casascius Bitcoin, a gold pendant designed by Picasso, a rare Pokemon card, and a highly collectible rookie Michael Jordan basketball card. Of all the treasures he has collected, Collins-Black says one with a particularly powerful story is the 1960 Olympic gold medal won by sprinter Wilma Rudolph. “She had polio as a child, and the doctors thought she wouldn’t survive, and then she wouldn’t walk,” explains Collins-Black. “She wore a brace for years, and then she became the fastest woman in the world. It’s a crazy story.”
While collecting his unique treasure, Collins-Black was also figuring out where to hide the boxes and what clues he could insert into his book to guide treasure hunters to them. “I was thinking about clues the whole time I was working on the book,” he says. “There are clues in the book that are years old, and some that came only at the very end.”
Asked what advice he would give to those hoping to find the boxes, he says a keen eye for detail will be essential to uncovering all the book’s secrets.
“The chapters in my book are really about becoming a better treasure hunter,” he explains. “The instructions on how to solve the clues and find the treasure are really in the chapter topics themselves. That’s why I just say, ‘Read the book,’ because that’s all you need. That’s all you need.”
As for why he invested so much of his own money and time into creating the treasure hunt, Collins-Black says he hoped to spark the imagination.
“At the end of the day, the excitement and joy of the experience has value,” he says. “It sounds like a cliché, but for me, when I was looking for Forrest Fenn’s treasure, the idea of that was the most exciting. If I had found the treasure, it would have been euphoric, but I don’t know if it would have surpassed the sheer joy I had through the whole process.”
‘There’s a treasure inside’ by Jon Collins-Black is available now