Someone Buried $10,000 in San Francisco and the Entire City Is Trying to Find It

Somewhere in San Francisco, buried one foot underground, sits a 150-pound treasure chest packed with 10,000 one-dollar coins. And the city has completely lost it trying to find the thing.

The hunt kicked off Wednesday morning when an anonymous post appeared on Reddit announcing the buried treasure and offering a cryptic poem with clues. Within hours, people across the city were ditching work, skipping school and showing up at parks, hillsides and historic sites with shovels in hand.

One 16-year-old left his history class after his dad texted him two words: “It’s on.” He grabbed a shovel, tried digging near the old U.S. Mint, then hopped a ferry to Angel Island with a bicycle strapped to his back. He came up empty but said he would keep hunting until someone finds it.

The hunt is the work of two anonymous friends in their 30s who live on the west side of the city. They pulled off a similar stunt last year, burying a chest filled with cash, gold nuggets and baseball cards on Mt. Sutro. That one was found in 11 hours by a team of three people and one very excited dog.

This year’s chest took six trips to the bank to fill with coins. The creators buried it months ago and waited for a nice day to release the clues.

San Francisco has a long history of treasure hunts. The Chronicle ran one in the 1950s named after Emperor Norton, the eccentric 19th-century resident who declared himself ruler of the United States. A private detective has hosted a Chinese New Year hunt annually since 1989.

In a city built on gold rushes, dot-com booms and AI fortunes, it turns out people still love the simplest version of the chase: a poem, a shovel and something shiny underground.