These are America's luckiest-ever treasure hunters
0 of Courtesy Mel Fisher's Treasures
List View Gallery View Full screen
You won't believe the riches these fortune seekers have found
Real-life Indiana Joneses, America's most successful treasure hunters have discovered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lost gold, jewels and other precious artifacts, thanks to a mix of passion, ingenuity and dogged perseverance, with plenty of luck thrown in of course. We reveal the most fortunate of all time and tally up their lucrative finds.
24 July 2018
Features
1 of Sea Research Society/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
E. Lee Spence, total value of treasure found: $100 million
As a child, E. Lee Spence was obsessed with tales of lost shipwrecks and pirate booty. A sign of things to come, the treasure hunter extraordinaire assembled his own diving gear when he was in elementary school and discovered his first shipwreck in 1959 at just 12 years of age.
24 July 2018
Features
2 of Barbara Voulgaris/Naval Historical Center/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
E. Lee Spence, total value of treasure found: $100 million
Spence spent his teen years studying and searching for lost treasure. He was 23 when he made his first major discovery – the Civil War submarine Hunley, which vanished in 1864. Spence mapped the location just off the coast of South Carolina and alerted the grateful authorities.
24 July 2018
Features
3 of Pi3.124/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
E. Lee Spence, total value of treasure found: $100 million
Valued at $40 million, the sub together with its contents has been described as one of the most significant and valuable contributions ever made to the state of South Carolina. While the Hunley is Spence's most impressive find, the shipwreck expert has discovered numerous other lost vessels.
24 July 2018
Features
4 of Spence Trust/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
E. Lee Spence, total value of treasure found: $100 million
Besides the Hunley, Spence was instrumental in locating the Civil War-era ships Housatonic, Constance and Minho, as well the SS Ozama, a steamer that was wrecked off Cape Romain in 1896. All in all, Spence has found $100 million-worth of artifacts.
24 July 2018
Features
5 of Courtesy Facebook
List View Gallery View Full screen
Tommy Gregory Thompson, total value of treasure found: $150 million
Tommy Gregory Thompson became the toast of the treasure hunting world in 1988 after locating the fabled SS Central America, one of America's greatest lost ships. The ocean engineer from Ohio had spent years analyzing the route of the vessel and developing the technology to seek it out.
24 July 2018
6 of Childs/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
Tommy Gregory Thompson, total value of treasure found: $150 million
The ship, which went down in 1857, was loaded with gold worth $150 million in today's money and its loss contributed to the Panic of 1857, which is considered the first real global economic crisis.
24 July 2018
Features
7 of Courtesy Columbus-America Discovery Group
List View Gallery View Full screen
Tommy Gregory Thompson, total value of treasure found: $150 million
Thompson had persuaded investors to part with $12.5 million to finance the extensive search and salvage operation. From 1988 to 1991, the ocean expert recovered hundreds of gold bars, coins and other precious artifacts worth tens of millions of dollars.
24 July 2018
Features
8 of Courtesy Delaware County Sheriff's Office
List View Gallery View Full screen
Tommy Gregory Thompson, total value of treasure found: $150 million
In 2000, Thompson sold $50 million worth of treasure he'd salvaged but failed to pay back investors. They sued in 2005, won the case and Thompson ended up going on the run. Out of luck, the fugitive treasure hunter was arrested in a Florida hotel room in 2016 and thrown in jail, where he remains.
24 July 2018
Features
9 of Courtesy NFA Foundation
List View Gallery View Full screen
Brenton Easter, total value of treasure found: $250 million
A very different kind of treasure hunter, Special Agent Brenton Easter is the Feds' very own Indiana Jones. The FBI sleuth, who has been a lifelong fan of the Indy movies, specializes in tracking down and recovering stolen art and antiquities.
24 July 2018
Features
10 of Courtesy Slater Museum
List View Gallery View Full screen
Brenton Easter, total value of treasure found: $250 million
Easter has intercepted thousands of artifacts worth some $250 million during his illustrious career. The top agent has single-handedly dented the black market for smuggled treasures and his shrewd detective work has led to the arrest of countless smugglers.
24 July 2018
Features
11 of Courtesy ICE
List View Gallery View Full screen
Brenton Easter, total value of treasure found: $250 million
The most notorious criminals caught by Easter include New York gallery owner Subhash Kapoor, who had looted more than 2,600 artifacts with a combined value of $100 million, mainly from temples and shrines in India.
24 July 2018
Features
12 of Joseph Eid/Getty
List View Gallery View Full screen
Brenton Easter, total value of treasure found: $250 million
Ever able and willing in his mission to destroy the black market for art and antiquities, Easter is currently engaged in Operation Fertile Crescent, which is seeking to recover the thousands of precious artifacts that were plundered by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
24 July 2018
Features
13 of Freebooter17/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
Barry Clifford, total value of treasure found: $400 million
Underwater explorer Barry Clifford lucked out big-time in 1984 when he discovered the wreck of Samuel Bellamy's pirate ship Whydah, which met its end in a violent storm off Cape Cod back in 1717. Unlike the other treasure hunters in our round-up, Clifford got to keep 100% of the booty.
24 July 2018
Features
14 of Theodore Scott/Flickr CC
List View Gallery View Full screen
Barry Clifford, total value of treasure found: $400 million
In 1988, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the entire pirate ship belonged to Clifford, effectively gifting him the vessel and its vast cargo of gold and silver worth an eye-opening $400 million.
24 July 2018
Features
15 of Courtesy Wydah Pirate Museum/Facebook
List View Gallery View Full screen
Barry Clifford, total value of treasure found: $400 million
Yet instead of selling the ship's 200,000 recovered artifacts to the highest bidder, Clifford created a museum in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts to display his finds, and donated a selection of artifacts to an international touring exhibition called Real Pirates.
24 July 2018
Features
16 of Don Emmert/AFP/Getty
List View Gallery View Full screen
Barry Clifford, total value of treasure found: $400 million
Lauded for his efforts to preserve the ship and its valuable contents, Clifford has been honored with prestigious accolades such as the Lowell Thomas Award for underwater archaeology, and was named 'Explorer-in-Residence' by New York's American Museum of Natural History in 2006.
24 July 2018
Features
17 of Courtesy Mel Fisher's Treasures
List View Gallery View Full screen
Mel Fisher, total value of treasure found: $500 million
The late Mel Fisher will go down in history as one of America's most noteworthy treasure hunters. A former chicken farmer with a talent for finding things, Fisher got into diving in the 1950s and combined his detective and deep-sea diving skills to hunt for the world's lost wrecks.
24 July 2018
Features
18 of Courtesy Mel Fisher's Treasures
List View Gallery View Full screen
Mel Fisher, total value of treasure found: $500 million
Tragedy struck in 1975 when Fisher lost his son, daughter-in-law and a friend during a treasure hunting expedition, but he vowed to continue. Money was tight but Fisher persisted, often telling himself “today's the day”.
24 July 2018
Features
19 of Courtesy Mel Fisher's Treasures
List View Gallery View Full screen
Mel Fisher, total value of treasure found: $500 million
In 1985, Fisher made the find of his career when he discovered the Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. In total, an incredible $450 million-worth of treasure was recovered, including 40 tons of gold and silver, and some of the finest emeralds ever mined.
24 July 2018
Features
20 of Courtesy Mel Fisher's Treasures
List View Gallery View Full screen
Mel Fisher, total value of treasure found: $500 million
Fisher, who died in 1998, also discovered the Atocha's sister ship, the Santa Margarita, as well as the wreck of a slave ship called the Henrietta Marie. His eponymous company, which is headed by grandson Sean Fisher, carries on the late treasure hunter's good work.
24 July 2018
Features
21 of Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty
List View Gallery View Full screen
Greg Stemm, total value of treasure found: $1.4 billion
As head honcho of leading salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration and the defunct Seahawk Deep Ocean Technology, Greg Stemm has discovered a staggering $1.4 billion-worth of lost treasure.
24 July 2018
Features
22 of National Maritime Museum/Wikimedia Commons
List View Gallery View Full screen
Greg Stemm, total value of treasure found: $1.4 billion
In 2007, the shipwreck hunter and his firm located the Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, which was sunk of the coast of Portugal in 1804 carrying colossal amounts of gold and silver coins.
24 July 2018
Features
23 of Javier Lizon/Getty
List View Gallery View Full screen
Greg Stemm, total value of treasure found: $1.4 billion
Odyssey Marine Exploration recovered gold and silver coins worth $500 million but, after protracted legal proceedings, was forced to hand them over to the Spanish government, which put a claim on the treasure. The coins are now on display at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid.
24 July 2018
Features
24 of Courtesy Odyssey Marine Exploration
List View Gallery View Full screen
Greg Stemm, total value of treasure found: $1.4 billion
Fortunately, the company has been able to profit from the discovery of numerous other shipwrecks, including HMS Victory, the predecessor to English Admiral Lord Nelson's namesake ship, which yielded $655 million in treasure, not to mention a cut from finding and salvaging the SS Gairsoppa and Buen Jesús y Nuestra Señoradel Rosario.
24 July 2018
Features