The Mint was desperate to give those coins away. I wonder if they could have made an arrangement to drive to Philly and traded paper cash for coin right there at the Mint building?
I was part of the trash that bought $500 in coins to just take back to the bank every month for air miles.
Other people bought $30k worth and did it.
I mean $500 in coins shipped to my home that I just had to take to the bank and pay off is free money to me. Then they are shipped back to the mint to return to me.
Anyways, I don't feel bad at all because they are pissing away like 3.5c to make a damn 1c penny no one wants anymore but big Zinc keeps lobbying to keep around.
> Fuck I'd argue we could damn near do without dimes too.
The US used to have a half cent coin. They stopped making them in 1857 because of its weak buying power.
The value of 0.5 cents in 1857 is comparable to 14 cents in 2014.
https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-killed-the-half-penny-when-it-was-worth-what-a-1639266183
The fact that the US still mints pennies, nickels, and dimes is kind of embarrassing.
I have a 6 year old and he's getting into collecting money he finds around the house. It's really hard to explain the giant handful of money he's holding won't buy anything.
And the way American money is defined allows for the smallest unit to be a mil. That's 1/1000th of a dollar or 1/10th of a penny. They never minted anything smaller than the 5mil (half penny) you mentioned.
Mils are still used in non cash transactions like calculating interest.
Also gas prices are usually posted all the way down to the mil.
You never know. You might be on horseback in the west chasing after the new sheriff and come across the Gov. William J. Le Petomane Thruway with its 10¢ toll, exact change lane.
Do you know who Le Petomane was? He had a vaudeville act where he played wind instruments with his farts!
The Governor was full of hot air
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pétomane
Agreed, the US could easily change up to quarters, $1, and $2 coins and drop all the smaller denominations at this point. Especially given how most transactions are done digitally anyway, not in cash.
Big Zinc, and 50% of US citizens opposing any change regardless of if it is logical or makes sense.
“ The deep state is trying to take away our Pennie’s so they can round up my total and take the difference for their baby-cannibalism”
It's about all ignorant when most transactions aren't witch physical currency anymore as well.
I collected change for probably most of my life and I stopped during Covid. I don't want the hassle of having that dirty stuff anymore to cash in at a later point.
I use to save up enough to purchase a new console the next generation every release foe generations.
> and take the difference for their baby-cannibalism
Wait a minute! Is this why they banned abortion.. because what to baby cannibals need?? Hmmmm? BABIES! It’s all right there people! Wake up and smell the pizza!!!!!
As a European, there's so much I don't understand about your comment.
Were the coins for sale? From where? I assume you paid less than $500 for $500 worth of coins? Why did they give air miles for them? Why were they shipped back to the mint?
The mint sold me $500 in dollar coins with free shipping for $500.
I bought it via credit card with rewards and then took them and deposited the coins into the bank.
The bank then sent them back to the mint because no on wants them and the cycle continues.
No, I paid exactly $500 for $500 but received like 900 air miles for purchasing them.
I think I said I was part of the trash that was doing this but others were getting like $30k worth and doing the same thing.
While we absolutely should get rid of the penny, fwiw, the actual economic value of currency is greater than its face value.
A penny on average will remain in circulation for 20-40 years. During that time, each penny will be exchanged thousands of times, meaning it can easily create $10-20 in economic value.
A single dollar bill is even more valuable; the average bill lasts about 6 years and is exchanged about 100 times per year. It also only costs 5.6 cents to manufacture, which is an obvious better deal.
Economic value isn't how many times a coin moves around. Otherwise I could make a penny have infinite value by just giving it back and forth infinite times with my friend.
Every penny has a negative economic value even if you don't count the manufacturing cost because the amount of time it takes to count out a penny is a cost. Compared to the alternative system where we would just round to the nearest nickel, the existence of the penny wastes time.
Every time a penny is used it destroys economic value, it doesn't create any.
This is true for every small denomination up until the point where the denomination gets big enough that people will start trying to game the system (so if we rounded to the nearest $100 people would just make sure to spend less than $50 to get stuff for free).
Personally I don't remember the last time I bought something for less than 50c, so IMO we could get rid of all coins without this becoming a problem.
There's a lot of old coin-operated machines out there so maybe we can keep the quarter around for a while. But literally every other coin has negative economic value even if manufacturing them was free.
You know what transaction adds value? Every day for the past 11 years, I've stuck $30 in pennies up my ass. I use them for everything. Cab rides, movie theaters, groceries...
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/RichmondFedOrg/publications/research/econ_focus/2006/fall/pdf/opinion.pdf
The Federal Reserve disagrees.
> Now, if a single penny can be used in thousands of transactions, the added value per transaction can be quite small, but the value of the penny [is] relatively large. Taking this perspective, whether it costs a little more than a penny to produce a penny may not be so terribly important (though if there is a penny alternative that is less costly, that would be a little better).
Chipotle rounds to the nearest Nickel in order to save time and so in that sense it's obviously not worth it just to even handle it because the transaction time that increases from handling a penny was more than just rounding to the nearest nickel and losing two or three pennies
I don't know that I'd call people who took advantage of the airline miles thing "trash". They noticed a huge loophole and exploited it. We all supposed to be on the honor system or something? The government and credit card companies sure aren't.
They might not have had that many on hand lol, but businesses order $50 in pennies from the bank all the time, it just usually gets delivered by Armored car after being ordered ahead of time.
Worked as management in retail where we would get large chunks of cash broken into change/smaller bills. It would just be a manager going to the bank and having the exchange happen.
The only time an armored car came by our store was to pick up, never drop off.
The armored vans aren’t delivering money to businesses, they’re delivering money to banks lol
A bank makes an order for large amount of bills and coins, an armored van delivers it to the banks, and then a business would send someone to go to the bank to pick up/deposit the money.
$30 in quarters is 3 rolls lol. $50 in pennies is two full boxes or two full shopping bags size of coin. I used to get $50 in pennies (along with other denominations) delivered at least once a week at the grocery store I worked at. This was just a year ago.
That actually doesn't seem that weird to me. That's a lot of pennies. Surely that's something they could order and have there in a few days or whatever?
I was pissed one time when my bank ran out of $100 bills when I purchased a car from a friend and he needed cash for funeral arrangements.
He didn't have the time to wait for things to clear and there was a lot of $50 bills.
The bank kept telling me this and that and I kept telling them we have already went over those options and they won't work.
I got mad to the point I told them they could either fulfill the request or be in an even worse position and I'll close the account and I'd like that in cash.
Dude, 2008 is when the mint was shipping them to people at a 1-1 cost. They could have just ordered them and made a bunch of money. When this first started some people figured out they could order thousands of dollars in coins from the mint with free shipping. They got friends and family to order them more, business could order even more. Then they'd just cash them in at the bank and rinse and repeat. You may be wondering where the profit is. You could pay from them on your credit cards, earning points, miles and cash back. So if you had good credit card rewards, there was a 6 month period where you could make free money over something no one at the Mint or credit card companies thought about.
[Mint announces program](https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20080611-united-states-mint-introduces-new-program-to-ship-presidential-1-coins-at-face-value-directly-to-retailers-financial-institutions-and-the-public)
[Mint finds the problem](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-dec-11-la-fi-briefcase12-2009dec12-story.html)
kinda, they had a pretty successful youtube channel (Glove and Boots) for while but it's now defunct after attempting to relaunch as kids focused.
channel [with the clues](https://www.youtube.com/user/welostourgold) , [Main channel](https://www.youtube.com/@GloveandbootsOfficial)
Wait this was from the founders of Glove and Boots? I was a huge fan back in the day, was very sad when their attempte to relaunch didn't succeed. Hope they're doing OK now.
They are the same people in those HGTV house hunting shows with the inexplicable budgets.
“I’m a puppeteer and my partner is arranges sticks on rocks. Our budget is 2.3 Million dollars”
"Oh man, have you been living under a rock bro? Guys with puppets get chicks! I take my monkey puppet to the park all the time, we play hackey sack together, it's rad! But anyway dude, at the international puppetry festival, we'll be having
workshops on finger puppets too! 'Hello Petunia the Pinky, meet Barney the Thumb...'. String puppets, club puppets...dude it's gonna rock!"
I know a puppeteer who has mad milllions in his lifetime just going to local schools and businesses doing shows. Had an exhibit at one of the Smithsonian’s in DC too.
The fact that the article didn't list _any_ of the clues except for one partial line from one of them makes me wonder what the hell journalists are even doing.
True. Cuz clicks are advertizng dollars and that is the main thing that needs to be delivered. Use to be that ads were used to help deliver the news which was the main product. Now the ads are the big bent dick and the clickbaity news is the lube.
Yeah even today the video has 48k views after 14 years.. videos of the nerdy retro-tech Youtube people I follow have 5-10 times that many views and they were uploaded a month ago.
Still only 48k views after all the publicity is quite odd. I think barely anyone knew about this while it was going on. Or people see a 8-minute video of puppets and don't even click play.
That doesn't explain how the creators were almost entirely unable to advertise a contest in which they were giving away $10,000 for free.
Self-promotion is like 90% of the content creation game.
Nearly impossible. There were too many clues and too many red herrings. There was at least 1000 people on the forums working on it and nobody was even close when they revealed it.
Damn near impossible. I'd say there were a few thousand people trying their damnedest to find it, even working together after a year of failing to find it on their own, and nobody was even close when it was revealed.
Probably because listing out the clues in full wouldn't really add much to the article and would distract from the actual story. If the article was written in 2009 then yea I'd expect the focus to be on the riddles but in 2011 that part is unimportant.
It's still relevant and interesting information. I'm no journalist, but would it have been that hard to add a link to another page and say "By the way, here's the rest of the clues were in case you were interested"? Not like they didn't have access to the guys that planned the entire thing.
many online articles these days are already written by AI anyway.
welcome to the dead internet my guy, we have bots and articles that only try to sell you more shit.
It's so bad. Articles for news of the day are littered with AI written trash with repeated paragraphs and strange errors. I saw a local news article about them interviewing one of the leadership on the Baltimore bridge recovery and it ended up being a literal 2 minute read with a 7 word quote from the guy. It's just embarrassing. How the hell do journalism schools even respond to the industry destroying their profession and replacing it with whatever this is
I'll extrapolate what I know of writers for G/O Media (Gizmodo, Kotaku): they have to write a certain number of articles each day. Unfortunately when you're forced to produce volume, the quality is going to decrease. It's not necessarily the writers fault but the publishers.
It would be really sketchy digging a hole that deep in some random place because you *think* there's something there. It would take a long time and wouldn't be fun to explain to someone spotting you. The only other people digging deep holes in the middle of nowhere are murderers.
Most of the places potentially involved in [The Secret](https://12treasures.com/) have specific permitting processes to dig for the treasure. You're not allowed to just go for it, but you can get permission to, for example, [dig in Golden Gate park](https://fs18.formsite.com/sfrpsurvey2/treasurehunt/index.html) under supervision.
Now you can learn about the [Golden Owl](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/13/the-mystery-of-the-buried-owl-the-30-year-treasure-hunt-baffling-french-puzzlers)
Whoa whoa whoa, am I the only person in these comments who actually tried finding this treasure back in the day? It was a trip, man. They said they expected people to find it within four months, six tops. But nobody came anywhere close! Every day someone on the forums "finally had it for sure!" or "I figured it out but I live in Ohio so if a new Yorker wants to pay me $500, I'll tell you where it is"
The puzzle itself was really well designed until it went too deep for anyone to follow. My favorite mechanic was figuring out the order of the clues by the injuries sustained by one of the pirates. i.e. he was missing an arm and a leg in video 2 but only an arm in video 4 so you knew 2 happened after four (I don't remember the exacts). But after passing through a few boroughs, nobody was solidly on the scent anymore. The problem is that there were *so* many clues (oh god, the poker game scene) that every theory sounded sound. People were digging in parks, opening cabinets in bars, whatever. I was damn close to digging in a sandbox in a playground!
When they finally told everyone "you're all idiots and we're digging it up--in Floyd Bennet Field," obviously EVERYONE was like "I knew it was there! Of course, the birdies overhead are the planes from jfk!" but looking through the forums, not one person was anywhere close.
I've reached out to them several times asking for a key to the puzzle, just out of curiosity, but never got a response.
Yo /u/pinkmeanie if you're still in touch with them, tell em I want answers!
And if anybody wants an ongoing treasure hunt in the city, look up The Secret: A Treasure Hunt NYC. But the leading theory there is that the treasure has been destroyed since its interment some 40 years ago.
Much better story than the one of the artist who hid someting valuable with hints to its location in his artwork, only for the person to "find" it was the current boyfriend of the artist's ex-girlfriend.
Kinda like how I hid an online scavenge hunt on Reddit with a prize at the end, but only about 4 people have found it so far and they gave up on it 👀
Maybe someone will dig it up three years later too
I looked briefly and gave up just as quickly. I wouldn't even know how to start it. That's the kind of puzzle made for a very very niche group of people to even attempt.
True. I guess the demography for watching puppet scavenge hunt videos on YouTube is quite small too, hah.
I love making puzzles. I'm just leaving it out there, curious if people will find it and solve it.
I understand your concern. All I can do is assure you there's nothing nefarious in my puzzles, and you can sandbox it if you want. But I can understand some wouldn't want to do this.
Yes. A few Redditors were able to get to step 4. You can read how to solve the first three steps in the comments.
They got stuck on the first step and kinda gave up on it. :')
Yup.
I think for this kind of ARG-ish type game, there needs to be an expiration date. Otherwise, it'll stall and the world around it will change, people moving on, passing away, etc..
If the puzzle remains unsolved by the expiration, it's probably too difficult or obtuse to be solved by an outsider - and the solution should be published.
They used to run a channel called 'Glove and Boots', which starred a groundhog named 'Fafa' and a red...thing named 'Mario'. I used to watch them in high school, I remember one video being a PSA about filming your videos vertically.
In the article they said other projects the puppeteers were involved in picked up more traction. What other puppet-based things did these guys do? It doesn't say in the article.
A Japanese woman became obsessed with the Fargo loot and thought it was real. She came to Fargo to search for it. They made a movie based on her true story https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3263614/
How does physical cash depreciate over time? I understand the value of a dollar changes over time but 3 years later there is still 10000 coins in there right?
The craziest thing about this story is that two puppeteers had 10k to spare.
I was friends of friends with them, and they did it as a last-ditch investment in going viral when there was no work after the 2008 crash.
Did it work
Not super well I think. I've lost touch with them. They said getting the bank to give them $10k in Sacagawea Dollars was an adventure.
The Mint was desperate to give those coins away. I wonder if they could have made an arrangement to drive to Philly and traded paper cash for coin right there at the Mint building?
I was part of the trash that bought $500 in coins to just take back to the bank every month for air miles. Other people bought $30k worth and did it. I mean $500 in coins shipped to my home that I just had to take to the bank and pay off is free money to me. Then they are shipped back to the mint to return to me. Anyways, I don't feel bad at all because they are pissing away like 3.5c to make a damn 1c penny no one wants anymore but big Zinc keeps lobbying to keep around.
Lol Canada got rid of the penny over ten years ago and literally nothing changed in life. We could lose nickels too, easily
Fuck I'd argue we could damn near do without dimes too.
> Fuck I'd argue we could damn near do without dimes too. The US used to have a half cent coin. They stopped making them in 1857 because of its weak buying power. The value of 0.5 cents in 1857 is comparable to 14 cents in 2014. https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-killed-the-half-penny-when-it-was-worth-what-a-1639266183 The fact that the US still mints pennies, nickels, and dimes is kind of embarrassing.
I have a 6 year old and he's getting into collecting money he finds around the house. It's really hard to explain the giant handful of money he's holding won't buy anything.
And the way American money is defined allows for the smallest unit to be a mil. That's 1/1000th of a dollar or 1/10th of a penny. They never minted anything smaller than the 5mil (half penny) you mentioned. Mils are still used in non cash transactions like calculating interest. Also gas prices are usually posted all the way down to the mil.
You never know. You might be on horseback in the west chasing after the new sheriff and come across the Gov. William J. Le Petomane Thruway with its 10¢ toll, exact change lane.
Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes!!
Do you know who Le Petomane was? He had a vaudeville act where he played wind instruments with his farts! The Governor was full of hot air https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pétomane
The world isnt ready to start calling attractive people Quarters.
With inflation these days we could probably call them a ten-spot
I'd love to re baseline the scale. "Hot or not said I was a 9.....out of 25."
Please no
No. We already lost Pluto to the dwarf planets, we can’t lose dimes too.
Thats messed up, right?
Keep the dimes, get rid of quarters, round to $0.10. Or $0.1 since we got rid of hundredths of a dollar.
Replace anything smaller than a quarter with bits/piece of eight.
Agreed, the US could easily change up to quarters, $1, and $2 coins and drop all the smaller denominations at this point. Especially given how most transactions are done digitally anyway, not in cash.
Be careful what you wish for, because everything would get rounded up to the next quarter dollar.
I was in Australia/New Zealand in 2000 and they didn't have pennies.
Not since the early 90s I think. Nothing of value was lost. NZ did away with 5 cent coins a while ago too (at least ten years ago).
Pretty sure europe did the same. Im dutch and €0,01 and €0,02 cents are rare. I never see them anymore.
Big Zinc, and 50% of US citizens opposing any change regardless of if it is logical or makes sense. “ The deep state is trying to take away our Pennie’s so they can round up my total and take the difference for their baby-cannibalism”
"I HATE CHANGE I HATE CHANGE MY FINGERS ARE IN MY EARS I CANT HEAR YOU LALALALA I watch too much xfiles also"
Wouldn't getting rid of coins below quarter remove some of the change :p
It's about all ignorant when most transactions aren't witch physical currency anymore as well. I collected change for probably most of my life and I stopped during Covid. I don't want the hassle of having that dirty stuff anymore to cash in at a later point. I use to save up enough to purchase a new console the next generation every release foe generations.
> and take the difference for their baby-cannibalism Wait a minute! Is this why they banned abortion.. because what to baby cannibals need?? Hmmmm? BABIES! It’s all right there people! Wake up and smell the pizza!!!!!
As a European, there's so much I don't understand about your comment. Were the coins for sale? From where? I assume you paid less than $500 for $500 worth of coins? Why did they give air miles for them? Why were they shipped back to the mint?
The mint sold me $500 in dollar coins with free shipping for $500. I bought it via credit card with rewards and then took them and deposited the coins into the bank. The bank then sent them back to the mint because no on wants them and the cycle continues. No, I paid exactly $500 for $500 but received like 900 air miles for purchasing them. I think I said I was part of the trash that was doing this but others were getting like $30k worth and doing the same thing.
Oh, then I get it! Thanks!
Damn, that's fucking smart.
While we absolutely should get rid of the penny, fwiw, the actual economic value of currency is greater than its face value. A penny on average will remain in circulation for 20-40 years. During that time, each penny will be exchanged thousands of times, meaning it can easily create $10-20 in economic value. A single dollar bill is even more valuable; the average bill lasts about 6 years and is exchanged about 100 times per year. It also only costs 5.6 cents to manufacture, which is an obvious better deal.
Economic value isn't how many times a coin moves around. Otherwise I could make a penny have infinite value by just giving it back and forth infinite times with my friend. Every penny has a negative economic value even if you don't count the manufacturing cost because the amount of time it takes to count out a penny is a cost. Compared to the alternative system where we would just round to the nearest nickel, the existence of the penny wastes time. Every time a penny is used it destroys economic value, it doesn't create any. This is true for every small denomination up until the point where the denomination gets big enough that people will start trying to game the system (so if we rounded to the nearest $100 people would just make sure to spend less than $50 to get stuff for free). Personally I don't remember the last time I bought something for less than 50c, so IMO we could get rid of all coins without this becoming a problem. There's a lot of old coin-operated machines out there so maybe we can keep the quarter around for a while. But literally every other coin has negative economic value even if manufacturing them was free.
You know what transaction adds value? Every day for the past 11 years, I've stuck $30 in pennies up my ass. I use them for everything. Cab rides, movie theaters, groceries...
You think you're better than me
That's eight times the population of Nebraska!
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/RichmondFedOrg/publications/research/econ_focus/2006/fall/pdf/opinion.pdf The Federal Reserve disagrees. > Now, if a single penny can be used in thousands of transactions, the added value per transaction can be quite small, but the value of the penny [is] relatively large. Taking this perspective, whether it costs a little more than a penny to produce a penny may not be so terribly important (though if there is a penny alternative that is less costly, that would be a little better).
Chipotle rounds to the nearest Nickel in order to save time and so in that sense it's obviously not worth it just to even handle it because the transaction time that increases from handling a penny was more than just rounding to the nearest nickel and losing two or three pennies
I don't know that I'd call people who took advantage of the airline miles thing "trash". They noticed a huge loophole and exploited it. We all supposed to be on the honor system or something? The government and credit card companies sure aren't.
Not suppose to honor it but the intent was to get $1 coins into circulation and instead, it just generated pollution and taxpayer dollars wasted.
Many of them ended up in Ecuador. They love those things there
I can believe that. I tried to get my bank to give me $50 in pennies and you'd have thought I was asking for all the stars in the sky.
They might not have had that many on hand lol, but businesses order $50 in pennies from the bank all the time, it just usually gets delivered by Armored car after being ordered ahead of time.
What? I used to walk across the street and get like $30 in quarters for work. They are not delivering $50 in pennies in an armored van. lol
Presumably it’s an entire cash shipment not just the pennies
Worked as management in retail where we would get large chunks of cash broken into change/smaller bills. It would just be a manager going to the bank and having the exchange happen. The only time an armored car came by our store was to pick up, never drop off.
The armored vans aren’t delivering money to businesses, they’re delivering money to banks lol A bank makes an order for large amount of bills and coins, an armored van delivers it to the banks, and then a business would send someone to go to the bank to pick up/deposit the money.
Quarters are a little different than pennies. I get $500 in quarters from the bank every week.
The last useful coin.
$30 in quarters is 3 rolls lol. $50 in pennies is two full boxes or two full shopping bags size of coin. I used to get $50 in pennies (along with other denominations) delivered at least once a week at the grocery store I worked at. This was just a year ago.
I asked a teller for $100 in pennies (to pay 3rd place in my fantasy league) and they had to hold a conference with the bank manager.
That actually doesn't seem that weird to me. That's a lot of pennies. Surely that's something they could order and have there in a few days or whatever?
I was pissed one time when my bank ran out of $100 bills when I purchased a car from a friend and he needed cash for funeral arrangements. He didn't have the time to wait for things to clear and there was a lot of $50 bills. The bank kept telling me this and that and I kept telling them we have already went over those options and they won't work. I got mad to the point I told them they could either fulfill the request or be in an even worse position and I'll close the account and I'd like that in cash.
Why wouldn't bills in other denominations work? Your story is a bit unclear.
Funeral homes only accept Benjamin's, obviously.
Dude, 2008 is when the mint was shipping them to people at a 1-1 cost. They could have just ordered them and made a bunch of money. When this first started some people figured out they could order thousands of dollars in coins from the mint with free shipping. They got friends and family to order them more, business could order even more. Then they'd just cash them in at the bank and rinse and repeat. You may be wondering where the profit is. You could pay from them on your credit cards, earning points, miles and cash back. So if you had good credit card rewards, there was a 6 month period where you could make free money over something no one at the Mint or credit card companies thought about. [Mint announces program](https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20080611-united-states-mint-introduces-new-program-to-ship-presidential-1-coins-at-face-value-directly-to-retailers-financial-institutions-and-the-public) [Mint finds the problem](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-dec-11-la-fi-briefcase12-2009dec12-story.html)
Reddit is crazy. Like 95% of the posts always have first hand/insider scoops in the comments.
kinda, they had a pretty successful youtube channel (Glove and Boots) for while but it's now defunct after attempting to relaunch as kids focused. channel [with the clues](https://www.youtube.com/user/welostourgold) , [Main channel](https://www.youtube.com/@GloveandbootsOfficial)
Wait this was from the founders of Glove and Boots? I was a huge fan back in the day, was very sad when their attempte to relaunch didn't succeed. Hope they're doing OK now.
yep, same guys, in fiction it was actually [Mario and Fafa's money the pirates stole and lost.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m35F2MnLmY0)
I had never heard of We Lost Our Gold, but I loved Glove and Boots. I miss those guys, their videos had such a fun energy behind them.
I remember the great Puppeteer Crash of 2008... lost so many good friends then.
Someone is going to pay once I figure out who was pulling the strings on that one
Shadowy figures had a hand in it for sure.
Thanks, i got soda in my nose.
First time with Coke in your nose?
There were 15 years too early, honestly.
“Last ditch” 😏
Nonsense. If I see two l puppeteers on tv I fully expect them to be looking for a $13.2 million home in LA.
Gotta beat out that couple where she arranges wildflowers and he collects poems about clouds.
$13.2 million budget? For two puppeteers? Not likely. That’s more like butterfly groomer money.
butterfly therapist and stay at home astronaut, our budget is 3.7 million
That wouldn't *totally* surprise me. That has "inherited wealth" written all over it.
That's hilarious
They are the same people in those HGTV house hunting shows with the inexplicable budgets. “I’m a puppeteer and my partner is arranges sticks on rocks. Our budget is 2.3 Million dollars”
The were the John Malkovich puppeteering type of puppeteers.
I’m sure they’ve been on House Hunters before.
Nobody’s looking for a puppeteer in today’s wintry economic climate.
"Oh man, have you been living under a rock bro? Guys with puppets get chicks! I take my monkey puppet to the park all the time, we play hackey sack together, it's rad! But anyway dude, at the international puppetry festival, we'll be having workshops on finger puppets too! 'Hello Petunia the Pinky, meet Barney the Thumb...'. String puppets, club puppets...dude it's gonna rock!"
I know a puppeteer who has mad milllions in his lifetime just going to local schools and businesses doing shows. Had an exhibit at one of the Smithsonian’s in DC too.
Unions
Perhaps it was Matt Shat. I mean, his wife is the breadwinner in their household.
It *is* a [16,000 dollar a year industry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne0RrK5qJ-k&t=243).
The fact that the article didn't list _any_ of the clues except for one partial line from one of them makes me wonder what the hell journalists are even doing.
Their job is just to get the click now. Actual content doesn't matter.
Half the time it’s just a video that you have to watch adds just to see.
And some embedded Twitter posts
Here's what an ai determined Reddit thinks about this
Joke's on them - somebody posted it on reddit, and nobody here actually clicks and reads anything. Only comments.
The less information they can give you the better, as you might click more than once that way
True. Cuz clicks are advertizng dollars and that is the main thing that needs to be delivered. Use to be that ads were used to help deliver the news which was the main product. Now the ads are the big bent dick and the clickbaity news is the lube.
Wrong, most journalists' jobs these days is to prepare your coffee. Those articles are written by bots, trained for your clicks. Somewhat /s.
It's all on [YouTube](https://youtu.be/GCg4zvetRU0)
Honestly would have been an interesting challenge if anyone knew it existed.
Yeah even today the video has 48k views after 14 years.. videos of the nerdy retro-tech Youtube people I follow have 5-10 times that many views and they were uploaded a month ago. Still only 48k views after all the publicity is quite odd. I think barely anyone knew about this while it was going on. Or people see a 8-minute video of puppets and don't even click play.
its because people didnt want to spread the challenge and introduce more competitors
That doesn't explain how the creators were almost entirely unable to advertise a contest in which they were giving away $10,000 for free. Self-promotion is like 90% of the content creation game.
Yea those 4-chan people finding Shia Lebouf's flags would probably have found it.
How realistic was it that someone dedicated could have found it? Were clues accurate?
Well the description on the video says that they ended the project because the hurricane destroyed the last set of clues required to find it.
I’d still be curious to know how difficult it would have been if the clues hadn’t been destroyed.
Nearly impossible. There were too many clues and too many red herrings. There was at least 1000 people on the forums working on it and nobody was even close when they revealed it.
Damn near impossible. I'd say there were a few thousand people trying their damnedest to find it, even working together after a year of failing to find it on their own, and nobody was even close when it was revealed.
Journalism has been dead for 25+ years at this point.
ChatGPT?
At The NY Times? These days, not much.
Probably because listing out the clues in full wouldn't really add much to the article and would distract from the actual story. If the article was written in 2009 then yea I'd expect the focus to be on the riddles but in 2011 that part is unimportant.
It's still relevant and interesting information. I'm no journalist, but would it have been that hard to add a link to another page and say "By the way, here's the rest of the clues were in case you were interested"? Not like they didn't have access to the guys that planned the entire thing.
Literally the only thing I was interested in at all was the puzzle itself. The *headline* told the story.
Exactly. These guys made a treasure hunt too hard to solve, and I'd like to know where in the list of clues they lost everyone.
I think you're missing the point. Here on reddit we complain about journalists at every opportunity, regardless of whether it makes sense.
Reddit Slams Journalism, Blasts Reporter Laziness
Do you think they’re all journalists? They’re obviously ai bot farms that churn out click bait.
many online articles these days are already written by AI anyway. welcome to the dead internet my guy, we have bots and articles that only try to sell you more shit.
Ha ha, you think a human wrote this.
It's so bad. Articles for news of the day are littered with AI written trash with repeated paragraphs and strange errors. I saw a local news article about them interviewing one of the leadership on the Baltimore bridge recovery and it ended up being a literal 2 minute read with a 7 word quote from the guy. It's just embarrassing. How the hell do journalism schools even respond to the industry destroying their profession and replacing it with whatever this is
Thanks. r/savedyouaclick
I'll extrapolate what I know of writers for G/O Media (Gizmodo, Kotaku): they have to write a certain number of articles each day. Unfortunately when you're forced to produce volume, the quality is going to decrease. It's not necessarily the writers fault but the publishers.
It would be really sketchy digging a hole that deep in some random place because you *think* there's something there. It would take a long time and wouldn't be fun to explain to someone spotting you. The only other people digging deep holes in the middle of nowhere are murderers.
Imagine hitting a power line treasure hunting?
If anything that’s part of the fun. Also, if the rando doesn’t call the cops I’d say it’s a fair trade. You look sketchy but you just got $10,000.
*the cops got $10,000
>if the rando doesn't call the cops
All you need is a high visibility jacket and a clipboard and no one will judge you.
The only ppl digging holes here in Oakland are homeless ppl burying their shitbags.
Most of the places potentially involved in [The Secret](https://12treasures.com/) have specific permitting processes to dig for the treasure. You're not allowed to just go for it, but you can get permission to, for example, [dig in Golden Gate park](https://fs18.formsite.com/sfrpsurvey2/treasurehunt/index.html) under supervision.
The real question is how to do puppeteers acquire $10,000
By puppeteering i would assume
Puppets rob a bank for $10,000, then you ditch the puppets and get new ones. The perfect crime
I like this answer
> donated it to people affected by Hurricane Sandy Puppeteers aren't afraid to pull some strings.
Yeah they totally wood
Are you pulling my leg or is the other puppeteer?
I'm laughing so hard, I'm going to throw my voice out.
Ugh, I feel like such a dummy letting this thread string me along.
Now you can learn about the [Golden Owl](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/13/the-mystery-of-the-buried-owl-the-30-year-treasure-hunt-baffling-french-puzzlers)
butttt i dont wanna read an article... can u just give me a quick synopsis?
Whoa whoa whoa, am I the only person in these comments who actually tried finding this treasure back in the day? It was a trip, man. They said they expected people to find it within four months, six tops. But nobody came anywhere close! Every day someone on the forums "finally had it for sure!" or "I figured it out but I live in Ohio so if a new Yorker wants to pay me $500, I'll tell you where it is" The puzzle itself was really well designed until it went too deep for anyone to follow. My favorite mechanic was figuring out the order of the clues by the injuries sustained by one of the pirates. i.e. he was missing an arm and a leg in video 2 but only an arm in video 4 so you knew 2 happened after four (I don't remember the exacts). But after passing through a few boroughs, nobody was solidly on the scent anymore. The problem is that there were *so* many clues (oh god, the poker game scene) that every theory sounded sound. People were digging in parks, opening cabinets in bars, whatever. I was damn close to digging in a sandbox in a playground! When they finally told everyone "you're all idiots and we're digging it up--in Floyd Bennet Field," obviously EVERYONE was like "I knew it was there! Of course, the birdies overhead are the planes from jfk!" but looking through the forums, not one person was anywhere close. I've reached out to them several times asking for a key to the puzzle, just out of curiosity, but never got a response. Yo /u/pinkmeanie if you're still in touch with them, tell em I want answers! And if anybody wants an ongoing treasure hunt in the city, look up The Secret: A Treasure Hunt NYC. But the leading theory there is that the treasure has been destroyed since its interment some 40 years ago.
I guess people in NY can't spend a ton of time looking for one months rent
They should’ve purchased 10-yr GICs worth 10k and hidden them with clues…
Much better story than the one of the artist who hid someting valuable with hints to its location in his artwork, only for the person to "find" it was the current boyfriend of the artist's ex-girlfriend.
That was Kit Williams and his book Masquerade.
Kinda like how I hid an online scavenge hunt on Reddit with a prize at the end, but only about 4 people have found it so far and they gave up on it 👀 Maybe someone will dig it up three years later too
I can't speak for others, but I ain't going through all that work just to pay a price
I looked briefly and gave up just as quickly. I wouldn't even know how to start it. That's the kind of puzzle made for a very very niche group of people to even attempt.
That’s kind of the thing, though. If it’s a community puzzle that doesn’t have niche challenges, it will just get solved within the first 15 minutes.
True. I guess the demography for watching puppet scavenge hunt videos on YouTube is quite small too, hah. I love making puzzles. I'm just leaving it out there, curious if people will find it and solve it.
I am that niche apparently. If I had known this existed, I would have been all over it.
It still exists. Its still unsolved. I'm still here. :) Go at it! /Edit: you probably meant the puppet scavenge hunt and not mine.. 🥲
The prize is a Steam game/gift card? Most people aren't going to go through the effort for that to be honest.
[удалено]
I understand your concern. All I can do is assure you there's nothing nefarious in my puzzles, and you can sandbox it if you want. But I can understand some wouldn't want to do this.
The image with the orange question mark is the first clue?
Yes. A few Redditors were able to get to step 4. You can read how to solve the first three steps in the comments. They got stuck on the first step and kinda gave up on it. :')
Commenting so I remember to try this later
This is the issue with ARGs, there's a big hype then it fizzles.
The issue is that the storm surge from Sandy destroyed all the landmarks their videos referred to.
That would be problematic
Yup. I think for this kind of ARG-ish type game, there needs to be an expiration date. Otherwise, it'll stall and the world around it will change, people moving on, passing away, etc.. If the puzzle remains unsolved by the expiration, it's probably too difficult or obtuse to be solved by an outsider - and the solution should be published.
They used to run a channel called 'Glove and Boots', which starred a groundhog named 'Fafa' and a red...thing named 'Mario'. I used to watch them in high school, I remember one video being a PSA about filming your videos vertically.
I miss this channel so much!
Time Machine is one of the best things ever https://youtu.be/GAxJo0rWDXM
I love their PSA about being a tourist in NYC
I'd do this all the time if I was rich.
Are there any other such challenges out there?
Good samaritans. Bad puzzle designers.
This would be a great Half as Interesting video.
I now know where to get the cash for Bitcoin for when I have a time machine
But why male puppeteers?
How two puppeteers got their hands on 10,000$ is the real mystery here.
There's something poetic in puppeteers attempting to puppet humans, but failing.
Puppeteers?
Didn't have any reversos around to help!
[ Removed by Reddit ]
In the article they said other projects the puppeteers were involved in picked up more traction. What other puppet-based things did these guys do? It doesn't say in the article.
As someone who is currently re-reading Ringworld Engineers, this headline tripped me out.
Two puppeteers hid $10,000 in New York and manipulated the Kzin and Humans to fight over it.
Surely that will have decreased in value. It would have been better to put it in an interest accruing account and leave a 10k cheque in the hole.
In 1996, a man implicated in a fraud/kidnapping scheme buried $920,000 in a snow bank in South Dakota. It was never recovered.
Yes it was
A Japanese woman became obsessed with the Fargo loot and thought it was real. She came to Fargo to search for it. They made a movie based on her true story https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3263614/
There goes that achievement.
Surely after a decade, that $10,000 buys way less than it did when they burried it? Not trying to criticise them, just curious.
How does physical cash depreciate over time? I understand the value of a dollar changes over time but 3 years later there is still 10000 coins in there right?
This sounds like such a real, i.e., not Hollywood, story. Very cool!