- If you've ever lost something,
you know just how frustrating it can be.
Now imagine if what you lost was a priceless treasure.
But more so than just being lost,
there are some irreplaceable treasures that were discovered
that simply vanished without a trace, with no explanation.
How could that have possibly happened?
The following are just those stories.
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Here are 10 Priceless Treasures That Vanished.
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Number 10 is Menorah from the Second Temple.
Some priceless treasures are so valuable,
not just because of their age
and the materials that they're made out of,
but because of their religious importance.
That's the case with the menorah
which disappeared from the Second Temple.
This artifact was an ancient Hebrew lamp stand
made of pure gold.
It was first used as a portable sanctuary set up by Moses.
And then, in the Second Temple in Jerusalem,
the menorah had been held up
as one of the most important symbols in Judaism.
But in 70BC, the Romans sacked the temple and stole it.
They then displayed it as a trophy of war
in the ironically named Temple of Peace.
The temple then burned down AD 191.
Rumors persist that this priceless treasure
ended up in the hands of an east-Germanic trade
known as the Vandals.
But to this day, no one knows where it is.
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Number nine is the Florentine Diamond.
Many treasures have been lost, stole, or hidden
throughout the 20th century.
One of the most captivating mysteries from this time
is the disappearance of the Florentine diamond.
The bright yellow diamond originally came from India,
although this origin has been disputed.
Many believe that it's as old as at least the 15th century
and was worn by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy,
during the Battle of Morat in 1476
in what is now modern day Switzerland.
It was found in the mud by a peasant
and since then, has changed many hands
until 1918 when at some point,
the diamond was stolen by a mysterious figure
close to the imperial family of Austria.
Treasure hunters continue to seek for the diamond
and sightings suggest that it was smuggled
into the Unites States for some unknown purpose.
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Number eight is the Honjo Masamune.
The sword known as the Honjo Masamune
represented the shogun in Japan
during their most powerful period.
It was passed down from one shogun to another,
a forged symbol of their power.
It was won by a general called Honjo in the 16th century
after it split his helmet but did not kill him.
The sword remained in Japan until 1945
when the war with the allies ended.
At the time, Sergeant Coldy Bimore
walked into a police station where the sword was being kept.
He kept it as a representative of the U.S. Army,
but Sergeant Bimore then vanished.
And it was later revealed
that there was no such man in the U.S. ranks.
It's a complete mystery who he was
and what happened to the sword.
But as a Japanese cultural and priceless treasure,
it remains one of the most sought after
and missing artifacts of all time.
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Number seven is Tucker's Cross.
Tucker's Cross is a jewel encrusted 22 karat gold cross
discovered by marine explorer, Teddy Tucker, in 1955.
While its origins cannot be verified,
some have suggested that the cross came from San Pedro,
a Spanish galleon which was lost at sea
during the late 15th century.
Tucker did not understand how important
his find was at the time.
But by the 1990s, it was largely considered
to be the most priceless artifact
ever discovered at a shipwreck site.
Long before this, Tucker sold the cross
to the government of Bermuda in 1959.
He and his wife oversaw the museum
where the cross was being stored on the island.
But just before the museum was about to be sold,
it was discovered that the cross stored there was a fake
and that Tucker's original discovery had been stolen
and replaced by a replica.
It remains missing to this day.
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Number six is Brink's-Mat Robbery.
In 1983, over 100 million dollars
worth of gold bullion, diamonds,
and cash were stolen from a warehouse
near Heathrow airport in London.
Newspapers dubbed it the crime of the century at the time.
And most believed that the robbers
and the gold would be recovered.
But this was only half true.
While some of the robbers were caught,
four got away and the gold vanished.
By the mid-90s, one theory was that the gold
had been melted down and sold back
to the legitimate gold market.
One report from an insider claimed
that all gold jewelry in the United Kingdom
now contains some of the stolen gold.
While this can't be verified,
it could be that the missing treasure trove
is hiding in plain sight in the store windows
of jewelry shops throughout the United Kingdom.
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Number five is Llywelyn's coronet.
One of the most important lost treasures
of Welsh history is the Llywelyn coronet,
an ancient crown dating back
to at least the early 13th century.
It was used to crown the Prince of Wales at the time
as the leader of the Welsh people.
After a short but brutal war with England,
the Welsh crown was seized
and displayed in Westminster Abbey
by King Edward I of England
to show that the English had conquered all of Wales.
The crown disappeared under
mysterious circumstances after that.
The fact that such an important relic of English conquest
could disappear lends itself to rumors
that the Welsh stole it back.
Since then, some believe it has been hidden
by a secret group in Wales
who will one day come forward with the crown
when Wales regains its independence.
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Number four is Tokugawa's buried treasure.
Stories of buried treasure and hidden loot
exist all across all cultures.
One of the most impressive is the relatively
little known mystery of Tokugawa's treasure.
This treasure was buried somewhere in Japan
around the middle of the 19th century.
It's said that the shoguns
who had ruled Japan for hundreds of years
knew that their empire was about to fall
and be replaced by the Japanese emperor.
Facing annihilation, the shoguns entire wealth
was buried in six huge caskets
76 meters beneath the earth.
Then all of those who were involved in hiding the treasure
disappeared in order to keep it safe.
The treasure has never been recovered,
though there are whispers that the Japanese emperor
recovered it and eventually used it
to pay for Japanese expansion.
Treasure hunters continue to this day
to look for it with zeal.
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Number three are the Antwerp diamonds.
In 2003, a group of thieves
committed one of the heists of the century,
stealing a vast treasure which has never been recovered.
Known as the Antwerp diamond heist,
the treasure trove of priceless jewels
included diamonds, gold, and other precious stones.
The thieves were led by a man called Leonardo Notarbartolo.
Also known as the School of Turin,
some of the gang, included Notarbartolo, got arrested,
but the diamonds have never been retrieved.
While authorities claim that the gang stole
over 100 million dollars worth of diamonds and gold,
he suggests that the entire heist was an insurance scam.
Notarbartolo was hired by an unnamed man
to rob the vault where the diamonds were stored.
But he says that there was only
20 million dollars of loot there.
Someone has the other 80 million, but nobody knows who.
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Number two is the Patiala necklace.
Created by the house of Cartier in 1928,
the Patiala necklace was made for a powerful Maharaja.
Adorned with a staggering 2,930 diamonds,
the necklace included the seven
largest diamond in the world.
Any one diamond from the necklace
would be ridiculously valuable today.
The necklace mysteriously vanished in 1948.
It was held in the royal treasury of Patiala,
but despite being under guard,
managed to disappear without a trace.
Bizarrely, some of the necklace has reappeared
but not all of it.
In 1982, the largest diamond was sold
for millions of dollars
at an auction in Geneva.
Then a piece of the necklace
was discovered in a secondhand jewelry shop,
of all places, in London.
However, the majority of the diamonds
and large parts of the necklace itself remain missing.
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And number one is the Peking man.
Some treasures are precious because of their rarity and age.
Many of these are archeological relics of our distant past.
The Peking man is just one of those relics
and vanished in 1941.
Discovered originally near Beijing,
the fossils consisted of broken pieces
of skull, mandibles, and teeth.
They dated back to over 700 thousand years ago.
The fossils revolutionized our understanding
of humanity's origin.
Despite being priceless in terms of both
monetary and historical value,
the fossils disappeared mysteriously in the early 40s.
At the time, Beijing was under Japanese control.
Just before America and Japan went to war,
the fossils were taken.
One story suggests that they vanished near America
and another that they were aboard a Japanese vessel
which now lies at the bottom of the Pacific ocean.
But either way, these are just rumors.
And a big part of our archeological history
may be lost forever.
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