These three treasure hunters got in a little over their heads when the discovered treasure worth over $500 million. The only thing they have left to do is claim it.
Room of Amber
The fabled “Amber Room” has been missing since WWII. Nobody knows when it was last visited exactly, but it is rumored that it was either dismantled or lost sometime during the mid-1900s. It was theorized that even if the room still existed, it would be in shambles or entirely destroyed by now. However, new research suggests that the Amber Room might still stand after all these years...
A Bold Gift
This room was created by German craftsmen as a gift to the Russian king at the time. The room existed in a palace near Berlin, and only royalty was allowed to view the space while it was being constructed. The Amber Room was strictly supposed to be an example of the royal family’s wealth and success, but they came up with some other wild ideas several years after the construction began…
Peter the Great
The room was gifted to the Russian czar, Peter the Great, in 1716. The room was later passed on from the king’s son, Fredrick William I, to the current King of Prussia. Fredrick William I knew of his father’s fleeting health and cared more about his country’s military power than any artwork that hung around his palace. Fredrick William was a politician, not a man of extravagance. He was happy to rid himself of such a gaudy and useless display of wealth.
Timeless Efforts
The room was removed from the Prussian king’s palace and replaced into the Ekaterininsky Palace, just outside of St. Petersburg. This extreme display of lavish wealth was so outrageous that, over the years, this room was referred to as one of the lost Great Wonders of the Earth. The room took over 120 years and three generations of workers to finish, and when it was finally completed, the second World War began...
The Adjustment Period
In 1941, Nazi forces invaded the Ekaterininsky Palace and dismantled the entirety of the Amber Room (or so we think) so Hitler could recreate it in his own personal dwelling. Hitler was a failed artist before he turned to politics. He considered himself somewhat of an “authoritative art critic” since he was experienced in the field as an amateur. He commanded troops to search Europe and steal all of the expensive/historical artworks that they could find. And they found a lot...
Pieces of a Whole
The Amber Room wasn’t technically a “room”. It was comprised of polished brass and gold, holding amber and semi-precious stones in the paneling. The walls and ceiling were completely removable, so in a sense, the room was “portable.” The last time the room was seen was in its portable state. Hitler took the room to Konigsberg in East Prussia in 1943. He displayed it in a public setting as a flashy representation of wealth and culture that he “brought” into his society. After that, nobody knew what happened to it…
Depressing Theories
Historians believed that the room was destroyed in the Allied Bombing, but some believed that Hitler preserved the Amber Room in a bunker or a mine that was under German control. This was a huge scare for modern historians—if the room was trapped in a mine or a bunker it would have been destroyed by moisture and age. To combat that, a Russian-born American chemist and amber expert named Dr. Alexander Shedrinsky took it upon himself to spearhead a recreation process so this incredible work of art could exist once more...
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Dr. Shedrinsky stated that the walls of the Amber Room were falling apart since they were not preserved by experts. Evidently, the German troops that were ordered to take care of the room were given no instructions on how to preserve the precious metals and stones, so the space rotted from the outside inward. However, in 1971, a surprising discovery gave historians hope for a full restoration of the room…
Stealing from the Thieves
Apparently, right before the Germans invaded during WWII, Russian historians were able to whisk away about 100 items from the Amber Room. These items included tables, jewelry boxes, and three chess sets that were all completely constructed of amber. These pieces were all original additions to the Amber Room, now close to 200 years old, they have been perfectly preserved over the years.
Piece by Piece
The recreation process was long and expensive, and unfortunately, a lot of the artwork (mosaics, paintings, etc.) was missing from WWII, so an exact floor replica was impossible. By 1990, all of the federal money for the restorative process had dried up, and a German natural gas company ended up funding the rest of the project. In totality, the project cost $113.8 million. Although the replica is now finished, some recent information discovered in 2018 by an amateur treasure hunting team has alluded to the possible hiding spot of the actual, historical Amber Room…
Hunting the Treasure
Today, three life-long treasure hunters, Peter Lohr, Günter Eckhardt, and Leonhard Blume believe that they have found the concealed location of the Amber Room in a network of unexplored tunnels underneath a cave in eastern Germany. Although this is exciting information, there are quite a few snags that held them back from being able to excavate the caves in the manner that they needed to. The most pressing, their lack of funding.
Looking Hopeless, Until...
Although these guys were treasure hunters, who were also scientists, geo-radar specialists, and doctors, they did not have the funding that it would take to bore into these tunnel systems. Second to that, there would have been no possible way to get in without blasting a hole into the ground big enough to fit a man through, but small enough to avoid collapsing the cave. The men were able to do a little research on the history of the tunnels, and what they did find motivated them to find a sponsor...
Development and Growth
These three men were able to conclude, without a shadow of a doubt, that these underground tunnels were utilized by German soldiers during WWII. They instantly found a metal hatch, emblazoned with Nazi symbols that led down into the tunnel. One problem though, there was a tree in the way...
Intentional Placement
A tree stump had grown completely over the top of the hatch, and down into the manhole that was created to access these secret tunnels. It appears as if that manhole was buried 50-70 years ago, and this tree had been placed there presumably when the hole was buried over. The three treasure hunters reached out to several entities for funding, but none wanted to help. The underground system remained a mystery until some crowdsourced funding allowed them to do some serious excavating at the site…
Putting Their Heads Together
The team got funded by some local donors that were part of the excavation process. They were able to rent both an infrared-radar camera and a backhoe to pull the stump out of the digging site. Once the stump was removed, the team was able to access the hatch, but some ancient debris blocked the way.
Pinning the Problem
There was concrete that had been poured over the hatch, which the team broke into with the backhoe, only to run into another significantly more daunting task. The hatch had a series of combination locks on it. Except, the locks didn’t have a tangible strategy for accessing the combinations. There was a weird series of pins and unfilled holes, which they assumed they would remove the pins from one hole to be placed into another, but the hatch was so old that the pins wouldn’t budge. The team hit a snag, but thanks to a supportive community, they were able to get the job done…
Major Breakthrough
A local welder offered his services to cut through the hatch, and when they cracked open the hole, the team was able to peer into a tunnel system that hadn’t been opened in close to 100 years. Peter Lohr peered down into the hole and breathed in 100-year-old air, which he described as smelling like “stale bread”. The team was about to make history, but they had to lower their camera down into the hole first.
Long and Dark
Before the team dropped the camera, they did one more geo-radar search on the inside of the tunnel. Just as they suspected, the tunnels spanned over 70 miles wide, and nearly 10 miles deep. However, the radar started picking up on some anomalies around the entrance of the tunnel that concerned the treasure hunters—they had seen objects like these before…
Danger Ahead
The anomalous objects were booby traps, likely set by German soldiers as they hid the hatch. Upon further inspection of the site, some trees around the hole had scars near their tops from steel ropes being dragged against them far in the past, indicating that some heavy objects were transported through the hatch long ago. Presumably, those objects were the pieces of the lost Amber Room...
No Sense in Trying
Unfortunately, the three treasure hunters were forced to give up on their search. They were not trained to deal with booby traps, and their camera could only take safe radar footage of 20 miles worth of the caves. This endeavor was considered to be too expensive, and the fact that the replica room exists dissuaded researchers from trying to dig deeper into those tunnels for the original paneling. Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time that insanely expensive artwork has gone missing, in fact, there are some equally impressive artifacts that have yet to be re-discovered…
Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco
In 1969 this piece was stolen from a gallery in Italy by two thieves that have yet to be caught to this day. They cut the painting from its frame in the middle of the day, while people were in the gallery viewing the artwork. This piece was previously appraised at $20,000,000, and it’s assumed that the thieves sold the painting to the black market art trade. Much like this next piece...
Phidias’ Zeus
This 42-foot tall sculpture was originally created in 435 BC and was adjusted as the years went on. This gold, marble, and ivory statue sat on a cedar wood throne and was adorned with ebony, ivory, gold, and diamonds. Records were kept of this statue until the 5th century AD when the statue mysteriously disappeared. There is no recorded history of its whereabouts, but its likeness was immortalized via imprint on Greek currency. If this statue existed today, it would likely be the single most expensive piece of artwork on Earth, similar to this next piece...
The Danish Jubilee Egg
This egg was enameled by Peter Carl Fabrigé in 1903 and is worth roughly $30,000,000 in modern times, that is if anyone could ever find it. This egg was a gift to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, and somehow over time, the egg must have disappeared. This is one of 7 missing Fabrigé eggs, and it’s arguably the least expensive of the bunch. While these eggs have disappeared, this next piece was stolen...
Storm on the Sea of Galilee
This Rembrandt painting was created in 1633 for the Gardner Museum of Boston. It was stolen from the same museum in 1990, and it hasn’t been seen since. Although the painting has gone through several appraisals, it’s cost could never be determined, and in some cases, the cost was set too high for the painting to even be considered sellable. Whatever these thieves got in payment for this painting was probably a fraction of its actual worth. It was stolen along with this next piece...
Landscape with an Obelisk
This piece was also stolen from Gardner Museum of Boston on the same day that “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” was taken. This is another painting that went through a similar appraising process and was never given a standard price. Painted in 1638 by Govert Flinck, nobody has seen this painting since it was stolen. There is a $5,000,000 reward for either of these paintings if anyone has any leads. The next piece is worth three times that...
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen
This $15,000,000 piece was stolen from the Van Gogh museum in 2002. This painting was meant to depict the congregation of his father’s church carrying Van Gogh’s mother while she was in recovery from a broken femur. This was the last depiction of Van Gogh’s mother in his artwork before she died, a piece of his family gone...
The Hope Diamond
This “cursed” diamond was stolen in 1791 and was passed around until 1995. The original diamond is said to have brought its former owner’s misfortune and illness, and when it was stolen from the French royal family, it was not missed. The diamond was cut and reshaped many times before it met its current state, which has been valued at $250 million. The diamond is now held in the Smithsonian museum, where it is safe from thieves, unlike this next piece of art...
The Scream
Edvard Munch made four separate versions of this painting, which was considered to be his masterpiece. They were all painted using different mediums, but the most expensive one (painted with oil paints) resided in Oslo, Norway until 1994 when it was stolen. The thieves demanded a ransom, which led the police to their location. Not only did they not get their ransom, but they were also thrown in jail for grand theft. Their demand for this painting was $20 million, so it seems they didn’t know that this painting was actually worth $120 million at least. This next piece, though, was the most expensive piece ever stolen...
The Mona Lisa
Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” painting is arguably the most famous painting in history. Valued at just over $2 billion, the painting was stolen in 1911 when an employee of the Louvre hid in a broom closet and waited until the museum closed to make his move. The painting was recovered in 1913, and it still resides in the Louvre to this day. It’s also the most expensive object to ever be stolen.
The Empire State Building
This wasn’t the work of a traditional thief, it was a team of journalists that acquired this building through a legal loophole that allowed them to scam their way into putting their names on the deed. After their piece had been written, they returned the building to its rightful owners, but the city of New York has yet to forgive the New York Daily News for their deceptive tactics. Since then, the deed system in NYC has tightened up massively.