The importance of research in Treasure Hunting

I frequently get phone calls and emails from treasure hunters. Sometimes their common sense goes out the window when in comes to treasure legends.

Here is my response to a email I received:

"According to verifiable records the James gang might have robed a total of $80,000 in their entire careers. This is inflated by me. In reality it was much less.

This can be checked from real records and court documents.

You also can expect they spent some, gave away some, and cached some.

So with that in mind it is not possible that they cached $100,000 is some cave near you.

The travels of Jesse James and his crew were also well documented. So it is highly unlikely that they stashed $100,000 in an area that they were never in.

However I suspect that your local history will give you the answers you seek.

Wrong gang dudes."

No matter how good the story is you must verify it by historical research. Old story's get repeated so many times and each time details are added.

It is the treasure hunters job to sort out fact from fiction. History will provide the truth and prevent you from going on a wild goose chase.

ericwt