Around New England

Treasure Hunter Finds $46,000 in Attic Somewhere in Western Massachusetts

April 24, 2021

A Connecticut man who uses a metal detector to help people hunt for treasure discovered a metal cash box containing $46,000 in an attic probably hidden there in 1958.

Keith Wille wouldn’t tell MassLive.com what town the house is in, but said it’s in western Massachusetts.

He said a woman whose aunt and uncle owned the house was getting ready to sell it. A family story had it that a large sum of cash was hidden in the attic, and she didn’t want to part with the house before finding it.

Family searches yielded nothing. Even a building contractor couldn’t find it.

Wille found it in about 50 minutes, using some sleuthing, a metal detector, and an endescope camera, a long thin tube that takes video at one end. His endescope camera connects wirelessly to his cell phone, which allowed him to see an image of a metal box on his cell phone screen.

Some previously cut floorboards in a corner of the attic near the roofline caught his attention, and his endescope camera picked up a keyhole for a lockbox.

Inside were bills from the 1930s and the 1950s adding up to about $46,000 in face value, “some of which were silver certificates potentially worth significantly more than face value,” Wille says in a video posted on his YouTube channel, which is called Rediscover Lost.

A 35-minute video documents his search and find.

Wille more typically finds lost jewelry, as recounted on his web site.