The Deserts
Most deserts are vast lands of absolute nothingness. With no life out in the desert, it is hard to know what is out there. People who have set out in the desert looking for
The Forgotten Winchester
This is a Winchester 1873 rifle that was made in 1882. A team of archaeologists was working in the Great Basin National Park in Nevada when they found the gun leaning on a juniper tree. They have no idea how it got there or who left it there. The gun originally cost $25, but today, it would be worth thousands.
Atari Video Games
Atari couldn’t sell over 700,000 video game cartridges, so they put them in a New Mexico landfill. For years, rumors about this swirled. In 2013, a film company decided to do a documentary and find out the truth. They found about 1,300 games. Some went to the New Mexico Museum of Space History, while others were sold at auction. They raised $107,000 by selling 800 of the games.
A 2,200-Year-Old Gold Coin
In 2010, researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota found a very rare, ancient coin. It weighed about an ounce, and it was found in the city of Tel Kedesh in northern Israel. It was the heaviest coin of the highest value ever found in Israel.
Fire of Australia Opal
Walter Bartram found an uncut opal that weighed a bit under 5,000 carats in 1946. He was in South Australia in a town called Cobber Pedy. He sold the opal for $362,000 to the South Australian Museum. This was less than what it was worth, but he wanted it to remain in his homeland.
The Ten Commandments Film Set
The 1923 film, The Ten Commandments was filmed in the desert of Guadalupe, California. It was shot during the silent-movie era that included a 12-story tall Pharaoh’s city. There was also a 15-foot tall replica of the Sphinx. It was believed to have been blown up after filming; however, the natural actions of the desert buried it. When it was uncovered, it was shocking.
Abandoned Ferrari
There were only 399 Ferrari Enzos ever made. In 2016, one of them was found deserted in the desert. Interpol had no idea how it got there; however, it is believed to either have been stolen or bought with dirty money. Since it was discovered, it has been sitting in a police impound lot in the deserts of Dubai.
The Mojave Nugget
The Mojave Nugget is the largest nugget of gold ever to be found in California. Ever since the Gold Rush, people have been
The Death Mask of Tutankhamun
This death mask is one of the most iconic of all ancient artifacts found in the Egyptian desert. A British Egyptologist named Howard Carter discovered the mask in 1925 in Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. He was the first to see the mask in 3,250-years. The worth is impossible to estimate.
Bom Jesus Shipwreck
Finding a shipwreck in the middle of the desert sounds strange, but it came to a stall in a lagoon 500-years-ago. Since then, the water dried up and became part of the Namib Desert on the west coast of southern Africa. It was uncovered by miners working for De Beers in 2016. When the ship was excavated, they found a treasure chest filled with gold coins. Score!
Libyan Desert Glass
This glass was found in the eastern Sahara. Scientists believe that it came from meteorites that exploded and melted on the desert floor 26 million years ago. Its worth is unknown.
$2 Billion Worth of Aluminum
Smelted aluminum worth over $2 billion was found in the Mexican desert near the U.S. border. An aluminum industry executive named Jeff Henderson found the aluminum while flying over the desert. It is believed that a Chinese businessman named Liu Ahongtian was the one who hid the metal in a plan to avoid tariffs. He denies this, but someone put it there.
Buried Fighter Jet
Saddam Hussein buried dozens of Russian-built MiG-25 and Su-25 fighter jets in the desert, west of Baghdad. In 2003, an international team was searching the area for weapons of mass destruction when they uncovered it. It is believed that they were buried in the sand so that the U.S. wouldn’t have access to them.
The Copper Scroll
This is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was discovered in the Israeli desert in 1952. Unlike the other Dead Sea Scrolls, this one was written in copper rather than parchment. It is a religious text which told of the hiding places of silver and gold artifacts.
Buddhist Treasures
The Gobi desert is one of the most remote places on Earth, yet it is where Buddhist treasures were found in 2009. In the 1930s, a monk named Tudev hid 64 crates of relics and artifacts in the desert. He hid them to keep the Communist troops from getting their hands on them. He told his grandson about the treasure in the ’90s and in 2009, he found them and dug them up. The treasures, which include manuscripts, artwork, and statues, are priceless.
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 in Egypt by a Frenchman working for Napoleon. It is from 196 B.C., and the writings helped us learn more about Egyptian history. Today, it can be found in the British Museum in London.
Meteorite From Mars
In
2,700-Year-Old Marijuana
In 2008, archaeologists found two pounds of marijuana in a 2,700-
The Boot Of Cortez
The Boot of Cortez is the largest gold nugget discovered i8n the western hemisphere. In 1989, a man bought a metal detector from Radio Shack and searched the desert around Senora in Mexico. The nugget weighed over 24-pounds, and it sold at auction in 2008 for $1,553,500.
