10.
The Priceless Golden Hoard The Panagyurishte Treasure is an ancient hoard
of artifacts from the days of the Thracian people, found in Bulgaria back in December
1949.
A trio of brothers were digging clay to make bricks when they came across the unexpected
hoard.
They discovered an amphora container, animal sculptures, jewelry and seven artifacts called
rhytons, all of them crafted from 24 karat gold.
At first, the brothers thought they had found hidden brass instruments used by the gypsies.
It wasn't until the curator of the local museum, Dr. Petar Gorbanov, arrived that they learned
the treasure was from around the 4th century BC.
That makes it nearly 2500 years old.
The artifacts are now believed to have been some kind of ceremonial set gifted to the
legendary Thracian king Seuthes III.
The brothers handed the treasure over to the local authorities, who then put it in a vault
at the Bulgarian National Bank.
There are three copies exhibited across the world, but authorities locked the genuine
treasure up tight in the vault.
Unfortunately, we don't have the exact monetary value of the treasure- it's pretty much priceless.
It's made up of almost 14 pounds (6kg) of pure gold and the fact that it was made by
the Thracians and is so well preserved, the Bulgarian government is not going to let anyone
get their paws on it to appraise the treasure!
9.
Celtic Coin Hoard The government of Jersey, a small island on
the English Channel, recently purchased one of the largest coin hoards in the entire world.
A set of coins from the Iron Age were just purchased for a sum of roughly $4,500,000,
paid by the Council of Ministers using the civil asset recovery fund.
This is money that the government has taken from criminals.
The official name of the treasure collection is the Le Catillon II hoard, and a pair of
amateur metal detector enthusiasts found it in 2012.
Reg Mead and Richard Miles had been searching the area for 30 years, looking for the treasure.
They began the quest decades ago when a local woman came to them with an ancient pot filled
with silver Celtic coins.
Her father had found it in a field near their home.
She didn't know the exact location where her father had found the pot.
But she pointed them in the right direction.
It just took Reg and Richard three more decades to locate the rest of it.
But, their patience paid off.
They dug up over 68,000 coins.
These coins weren't sitting in treasure chests or locked in strongboxes.
They were all melted together in a huge and solid chunk of ancient money.
It took researchers three years to break the coins apart and separate them into individual
pieces.
French Celts probably buried the coins hiding out on the island around 30 BC, 2000 years
ago in the days of Julius Caesar.
It's likely these Celts had fled the Roman invasion and took a massive fortune with them.
When it was originally discovered, experts valued it at $10,000,000.
8.
Bactrian Gold Experts say the lost Bactrian gold is worth
billions of dollars.
The Afghan government supposedly discovered it in February 2004, hidden inside the presidential
palace.
But since then, the treasure has gone missing and nobody knows where it is.
The president at the time of its original discovery, Hamid Karzai, said the treasure
was hiding in sealed vaults beneath his official residence.
And apparently, nobody knew it was there.
It's hard to believe the president of Afghanistan didn't know he was sitting on millions of
dollars worth of treasure from the days of Alexander the Great, but that was the official
statement.
Most of the treasure comes from 327 BC when Alexander stormed through the region with
his army, crippling the Persians.
It supposedly comprises over 20,000 gold, silver, and ivory artifacts.
These artifacts were made in all different parts of the ancient world, from Tajikistan
to Iran.
There were also Roman coins, coins with Buddhist imagery from the Far East, bronze Chinese
mirrors, carved Indian ivory, and ancient Greek rings.
Alexander collected the treasure left behind in the city and was kept safe by the rulers
throughout the years.
Then, in more modern times, the treasure was stashed in secret vaults by historians at
the museum in Kabul, kept safe from the greedy hands of the country’s presidents.
Now the Bactrian gold is gone, and we don't know where it went.
The most recent reports say the Taliban, who have taken over Afghanistan, is currently
searching for it, though it remains missing.
7.
The Gold Double Leopard One of the most important and valuable coins
in England is a rare Edward III gold Double Leopard.
It’s one of only three remaining coins from the rule of Edward III, and one of the earliest
coins ever minted in England.
Edward III ruled in the 14th century, during the Hundred Year's War that pitted England
against France.
In 1340, Edward declared himself both the King of England and the King of France, and
the war continued for another 20 years before officially ending.
This was the height of medieval England.
The country was rich, Edward held jousting and fighting tournaments, and he founded the
chivalric Order of the Grater in 1344, the same year this magical coin was printed.
Membership in the order was limited to the king and his 24 most trusted knights.
Many believe it was the original inspiration for the Round Table of King Arthur.
Two examples of this coin are in museums in England, while another is floating around
somewhere.
In its time, the huge gold coin was worth 6 shillings, with one shilling being worth
12 silver pennies.
To give you an idea of how much that was worth, most ordinary English citizens only made a
few pennies a week.
At the time this coin was minted, no other gold coins had been made in the past 600 years.
And almost immediately after, gold coinage stopped and didn't pick up again until much
later.
In 2022, a similar coin was found by a guy with a metal detector that sold at auction
for nearly $200,000.
6.
The Black Swan Project The Black Swan Project led to the amazing
discovery of the wreck of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a ship filled with treasure
that capsized during the brutal battle of Cape Santa Maria in 1804.
A company based in Florida called Odyssey Marine Exploration lead the project.
They came across a stash of coins at the bottom of the ocean weighing around 17 tons.
This puts pretty much every other coin hoard to shame.
This is because there are so many coins.
The ship was part of a Spanish fleet that lost some ships off the coast of Portugal.
It was carrying tons of silver, as well as cinnamon and quinoa on its way to Spain.
The British Navy spotted it and sank it as soon as they could, although they probably
regretted not being able to get the silver!
The discovery of the treasure in 2007 led to a very long legal battle between the Florida
company and the Spanish government.
It cost the company about $2,600,000 to retrieve the treasure from the sea.
A resolution finally came in February 2012.
The courts awarded the treasure to the Spanish government.
And as an extra kick in the teeth, Odyssey Marine Exploration had to pay the Spanish
government $1,000,000 for abusive litigation.
This left them at a negative of nearly $4,000,000.
I don't know if deep sea exploration is worth it for that price!
What do you think?
Let me know in the comments below!!
5.
Sculpture of Tutankhamen A sculpture of Tutankhamun’s head, the great
boy pharaoh of ancient Egypt, just sold for a whopping $6,000,000.
His sculpture is 3300 years old, but nobody knows exactly where it was found.
We know that before the sale, the mysterious artifact had been kept in a secretive German
art collection since the year 1985.
And before that, it had been in the possession of a German aristocrat named Prinz Wilhelm
von Thurn.
As for Tutankhamun, he was one of the most famous kings of Egypt.
He ruled for nine years and died just before his 20th birthday.
He was only ten when he took the throne and was gone by the age of 19.
The British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered his tomb in 1922 near Luxor, complete with
all its burial goods.
It was one of the greatest finds ever!!
What makes this sale even more interesting is that Egypt is furious.
The artifact, which is carved from brown quartzite and shows the boy king wearing the glorious
crown of the god Amun, is technically Egyptian property.
It was taken from somewhere in Egypt and given to a rich German man decades ago, and Egypt
wants it back.
Instead, it was sold to an unnamed buyer for a ridiculous fortune, and Egypt was told,
in so many words, to deal with it.
4.
Stolen Artifacts A New York antiquities collector recently
had to return a whopping 180 stolen artifacts.
Together, these treasures are worth $70 million.
According to the New York Times, billionaire Michael H. Steinhardt was forced to give up
his antique collection.
He's one of the most prolific collectors in the world and has been banned from purchasing
any more artifacts for the rest of his life.
This was agreed upon in a deal he made with the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
His having to give up the treasures was part of an investigation that went on for four
years.
Investigators traced dozens of looted relics directly back to his apartment and office.
Most of these treasures were smuggled out of various countries using criminal networks,
black markets, and forged paperwork.
The illegal antiquities market is very real, and a lot of billionaires seem to have their
toes dipped in it.
One of Michael’s stolen artifacts was a magnificent piece called the Larnax.
The Larnax was a mysterious chest used for holding human remains on the Greek island
of Crete over 3200 years ago.
Michael also had a ceremonial vessel from 400 BC, a fresco stolen from a Roman villa
at Herculaneum, and a golden bowl pillaged from the legendary site of Nimrud in Iraq.
3.
The San Jose The San Jose is the most valuable shipwreck
ever discovered.
It's not only worth millions, but also billions.
When the San Jose galleon sank in 1708 after leaving South America with its holds filled
to the brim with stolen treasure, it was destroyed!
It sank to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea with gold, silver, and jewelry worth $20 billion
in today's money.
It also sank with 600 human lives aboard, but their bones have long since decayed.
All that remains are a few shards of wood from the ship and all of its precious jewels.
The San Jose was part of a Spanish fleet trying to make it across the ocean back to the motherland
to deliver untold riches to the king.
But the ship got into a battle with the British in the late afternoon off the coast of Cartagena,
Colombia.
And by the time the sun had set, the galleon was under the waves and destroyed.
For centuries, this mysterious ship remained lost on the floor of the ocean.
It wasn't until 2015 that the Colombian government announced they had finally found it.
All these years later, the galleon is still sitting underneath 1800 feet (548m) of water.
It's also at the center of a custody dispute.
Spain says that they own it, and Colombia says they own it since it's in their waters.
As of 2022, Colombia is the one moving forward with plans to salvage over 200 tons of the
sunken treasure.
2.
The Sroda Treasure The Sroda Treasure is a hoard of fantastically
valuable silver and gold coins, as well as heaps of precious stones and unbelievable
gold jewelry.
The treasure dates back to the 14th century, with its largest component being 3000 pieces
of silver.
Crews discovered it during demolition at a building project in Poland in June 1985.
The authorities quickly swooped in and bought the treasure for themselves, and no archaeological
studies were carried out.
Then, three years later, during yet another demolition in the same place, an even bigger
piece of the hoard was discovered.
Again, the authorities took it.
But this time, they didn't get there quick enough and much of the treasure was looted.
In the days that followed, local residents started scouring the landfills where rubble
from other demolished buildings had been deposited, discovering overlooked pieces of jewelry centuries
old.
In the end, we don't know how many pieces of treasure were buried here in Poland because
people got away with so many of them.
Most of these stolen pieces probably got sold into the black market.
The treasure, according to archaeologists, probably belonged to King Charles IV of the
House of Luxembourg.
Historical records show that in the year 1348, or close to it, he pawned an enormous collection
of items to the Jewish banker Muscho in the town of Sroda.
Nobody ever reclaimed the treasure, and there have been legends about it in the region ever
since.
As it turns out, the banker must have buried the treasure, then either forgot where he
put it or never had time to go back for it.
In 2001, the lowest value of the treasure was estimated at $50,000,000, and that was
pushed up to $100,000,000 in 2005.
1.
Gilded Coffin The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a
gilded coffin from the 1st century BC back in July 2017.
The New York museum purchased the piece from a Paris art dealer for a shocking $4,000,000.
It’s an incredible coffin, covered completely in gold, made of wood and bronze.
It originally held the mummy of a high-ranking priest of the ram god Heryshef, who operated
out of a major temple in Hera-kleopolis.
It's arguably one of the most elaborate and valuable coffins ever taken out of Egypt.
And yet even though we know where it comes from and who was buried inside of it, nobody
knew until after the huge purchase that it had been looted previously in 1936!
It was stored in the collection of a man named Habib Tawadrus.
Then later, the coffin was transferred to Switzerland, given a fake export license in
the 1970s, and then looted in 2011 before being sold to the museum in New York.
But regardless of where it’s been or who it belongs to, it’s still one of the most
valuable coffins ever discovered.
Few museums will pay $4,000,000 for a single Egyptian relic.
Especially not one that belonged to a simple priest, someone most people have never even
heard of.
How much is too much to pay for an ancient artifact?
Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching.
Remember to hit subscribe and come back soon for more of the most shocking archaeological
videos ever!
See you then, bye!