A Man Hid 5 Boxes Across the U.S. With More Than $2 Million Worth of Treasure Inside The estimated total value of the stash, at press time, was between $2 million and $3 million.

^{This article originally appeared on Business Insider.}

Jon Collins-Black once dreamed of finding treasure of his own. Now, he's hidden five treasure boxes around the U.S. — and he wants people to find them.

Collins-Black, a musician turned entrepreneur in California, told Business Insider he made a tidy sum from early Bitcoin investments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he embarked on a project to secure a hoard of treasure and then send people off to search for it, hoping they'd enjoy the journey.

Collins-Black told BI there were now five chests — one large box and four smaller ones — hidden across the U.S.

He said none of the chests were buried or placed on private land, and reaching the boxes wouldn't require dangerous stunts.

He's written all the clues needed to find the treasure chests in a book called "There's Treasure Inside." Collins-Black said finding the leads in the text would require a close read — and a sharp but open mind.

Collins-Black secured most of the pieces of treasure at auction and through antique dealers over the past five years. They include a Casascius bitcoin (the first physical bitcoin ever made), a green Colombian emerald, a 2002 Shining Charizard Pokémon card, antiques from a shipwreck, and George Washington's jelly glass. BI has viewed the receipts for Collins-Black's purchases at auction.

He told BI he had a "loose budget" for the treasure's value. Based on the price he paid for the items at auction, he estimated that the total value of the stash, at press time, was between $2 million and $3 million. But frequently fluctuating items such as bitcoin could change the chests' worth.

"I was actually trying to figure out what the sweet spot would be as far as how big to make this without making it too big," Collins said. "I didn't want people to go too crazy."

All five treasure chests are also puzzle boxes, Collins-Black said — but the chests have instructions on how to open them so people don't have to destroy them.

Only he knows where the chests are, so quizzing his family members and his publisher won't help. He placed the boxes around the country himself, hiking more than a hundred miles on his trips.

Collins-Black said he didn't think he'd regret giving this money away.

"If bitcoin goes to $500,000 or $1 million or these treasures are worth $10 million in five to seven years and someone finds them, and then I think I'll just celebrate that and be happy for it," Collins-Black said.

"There were definitely a couple of items where people were like, 'Are you sure you want to put that in the treasure?'" he added. "But at the end of the day, I think I'll just be excited for whoever finds it."

Collins-Black said that he didn't have a favorite treasure in the lot but that he did have a soft spot for the emerald — which he calls a "beautiful" thing to look at.

Treasure hunts have long captured people's imaginations — you can even download a geocaching app to hunt for real-world caches of information using GPS devices.

The art collector Forrest Fenn hid a chest filled with gold, jewels, and other valuables in the Rocky Mountains in 2010 — and Collins-Black set out to look for it.

Collins-Black wasn't successful in his hunt. After a decadelong search, Fenn's chest was finally found in 2020.

While Collins-Black has gone out of his way to hide the boxes, he doesn't want the mysteries to outlive him. In eight or 10 years, he may release more clues.

"I don't have this desire for me to be long gone and there to be the legend of the Jon Collins-Black treasures," he said. "I don't want to drag it on forever."