It's another adult scavenger hunt, kids, and the prizes this time are worth a grand total of $50,000, if you're the first to solve the riddles and find the coins.
Once again, Marina district coin dealer Witter Coin is putting on a scavenger hunt with real, high-value prizes to be found. And this year's treasure trove, if you found them all, are reportedly worth over $50,000 in today's dollars.
Witter Coin launched their first of these scavenger hunts in April 2024, with 11 coins hidden around the city, each worth a few hundred dollars up to $2,500.
The prize bounty has grown since then, and this year's hunt will occur on Saturday, April 25th, as Witter Coin owner Seth Chandler explains in a video announcement (seen below). Ten coins will be hidden around the city, with riddles for clues about the locations released every hour on the hour starting at 7 am.
One of the coins that will be hidden, the grand prize as it were, is a Gold Rush-era gold coin that is worth $25,000. Chandler says that all the coins will be hidden in "safe locations across iconic San Francisco neighborhoods," and "no digging or trespassing" will be required.
"Weβre looking forward to making this one bigger and better than last year's," the announcement says. "So donβt be a spectator, be a prospector!"
The scavenger hunt coincides with National Coin Week, and serves as a marketing tool for Witter Coin, which says it is one of the oldest rare coin dealers in the country.
As Chandler tells KTVU, "We spend every day talking about the value and history of these coins. This time, we're putting them back into the city where the Gold Rush began."
Chandler is an outlier among rare coin dealers in that he's embraced social media to bring a new audience into the world of numismatics (coin collecting). As he told the SF Standard in 2024, he's lately been bringing in $4 million to $5 million in revenue by livestreaming and holding flash sales on the social shopping app WhatNot, selling things like Liberty Head nickels and Morgan silver dollars with bidding starting at just $1.
As he told the publication, about one third of the items he sells on the app go for very cheap, but a third sell at just about what they're worth, and others sell at even stronger prices.
