I began collecting coins, as many children do, by plugging Lincoln cents into penny boards and watching the holes disappear one by one.  Today's generation finds the same fascination with States Quarters.  My teenage years brought the twin distractions of fast cars and awkward romantic endeavors, and coin collecting activities were put off until I established a professional career in the emerging world of software. 

A good coin collection demands a good library, and the literature of the coin collector is surprisingly broad, encompassing auction catalogs, periodicals, and an ever expanding array of books fueled in part by the explosion of electronic resources which allow authors to conduct research at a remarkable pace.  One also finds a diversity of topics, ranging from technical discussions about minute differences in coins, to historical essays related to images depicted on coins, and to personal stories of collectors and collecting.  It was the latter to which I was most drawn when I began to write articles for a number of hobby periodicals. 
 
The story of the Baltimore gold hoard of 1934 was one that was known to collectors.  There had been an auction sale in 1935, and copies of the auction sale catalog had long been prized as collector's items.  Even better was to own a coin from the hoard itself.  In reading various accounts of the hoard, I was surprised at the questions that were not answered.  Everyone seemed to know the basic facts - two boys playing in a cellar had dug up a fortune in gold, and an important auction sale was held the following year.  It was further known that one of the boys had died young, and that the other had gotten into a bit of trouble with the law.  But at that point, no one seemed to know a whole lot more.  To my mind, this was not at all satisfying.  What really happened to the kids?  What happened to the gold?  And who buried the gold there in the first place?
 
What we had here was akin the the National Treasure films, except in reverse.  In the National Treasure movies we watch of group of characters follow a series of clues, engaged along the way in many enterprising exploits, such as kidnapping the President of the United States.  Eventually the clues lead to a fantastic treasure.  They are highly entertaining tales, but the Baltimore hoard did not follow the same arc.  Instead, the Baltimore story started out with the treasure, and then asked researchers to use the treasure in order to uncover the clues.  This I set out to do, determined to uncover every shred of information related to the hoard, and this quest turned into something of a treasure hunt itself.
 
Here then is the story of these two boys, Theodore and Henry, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed the "treasure hunt" of researching and writing it.