Panning for gold is simple, fun, and often VERY rewarding. It’s also the least expensive method for extracting gold from the Earth. All you really need to get started is a gold pan, which you can get for around twelve bucks!

It is often said that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. The twisted tale of Yamashita’s gold, allegedly buried in the Philippine islands, is a story of a great fortune and many crimes that became inseparably intertwined.

The tale begins with Japan’s plundering of its neighbors before and during World War II. As the Germans did in Europe, the Japanese squeezed vast fortunes from their Asian domain…

Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, standing before a firing squad, handed each of his executioners a gold coin and entreated them to shoot true… and preferably not in the head. The marksmen obliged, and on July 19, 1867, bullets ended Maximilian’s three-year career as Napoleon’s New World puppet.

In February 1519 a fleet of eleven Spanish ships landed on the coast of Mexico near the modern day port of Vera Cruz. Onboard was a force of nearly six hundred Conquistadors; led by the infamous Hernán Cortés, they had come to Mexico to conquer the land and convert its people to Christianity in the name of the Holy Roman Church… And if they all got filthy rich in the process — that was okay too!

The mysterious money pit has guarded its secret contents tenaciously despite two centuries of determined efforts to unearth it.