If you are unfamiliar with the WoodCollector saga/drama that dominated the forums for a good three+ months in late 2014/early 2015 you can read about it here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1011340.0It is a very long read but it is very very entertaining, there are a few other threads if you want to dig deeper into the rabbit hole here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=930649.0https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=932131Anyway lets get to my point...
As many of you caught on to 4 months ago
when some info leaked on the forum There was a hidden secret about the 10 wooden coins i made for 2015. Today you find out what was worth $1,000 to protect.
I have always been a fan of hidden treasure movies and the concept of something being on this planet that nobody has found that is worth enough to change someones life. My favorite movies have pretty much always been the Da Vinci Code and the National Treasure movies. Over the years as life has passed me by i had often thought about my legacy. Making my mark on history. Inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto himself and the loads of money i saved re-stocking my warehouses this year buying wood from you all directly i decided that now was my time.
Hidden on this planet somewhere is a 22" long 8" round titanium air proof time capsule container. Inside that container is 1,000 bronze bitcoins. Each one of those bronze coins is engraved with the private key to an address that holds 5BTC. Total inside the container there is key's to 5,000BTC.I have made and sold 9 2015 wooden physical bitcoins listed below. Each one of those coins has hidden in or on it a part of the puzzle. The key to decoding the first part of that puzzle is coin #10 which after much though is being given to someone whom i already chose from this forum. In order to decode each individual wooden coin you will have to have #10 in its physical presence and in order to solve the entire first clue you will need to posses and have all 10 coins in the same physical location. The clues in the coins were crafted in a fashion that you will never find them let alone figure them out via photographs, with x-rays, or in any fashion other than having all the coins in the same location at the same time to solve the puzzle.
These 10 coins are scattered around the globe from the U.S.A to Vietnam, Germany, The Netherlands, The UK & Singapore. Inherently making it difficult or a process to put all 10 of them in the same location. Once the first clue has been solved by decoding the 10 coins it will lead you to another clue which leads to another. 5 clues in total which must be found and solved in order to gain the location of the titanium capsule which holds the 5,000
BTC (or roughly $1,277,000usd at current value) treasure.
For reasons which i am sure are obvious to most of you, much like Satoshi this will be my last post or presence on the world wide web to protect my identity.
Thank you to all of you whom purchased my artworks from this forum and a very special thanks to all of you whom sold me wood over these past months which made this all possible. Regardless of the poor treatment of the self-righteous trolls and children on this forum, this treasure is my parting gift to all of you who support bitcoin in hopes that it can bring at least 10 of you together from around the globe with bitcoin at the center of it all.
Coin #1Coin #2Coin #3Coin #4Coin #5Coin #6Coin #7Coin #8Coin #9Coin #10 - The recipient of Coin #10 can post pictures of it when he receives it if he / she wishes to do so.
FAREWELL MY FRIENDS !!!!
Early November 2014, WoodCollector joins bitcointalk attempting to source exotic woods through the worldwide reach of forum members. Within a month he has been
introduced to the idea of creating beautiful bitcoin art with the various woods he has been acquiring. This leads to the first of the wooden coins being made/sold December 2, 2014 and carries on until the last coin is sold on February 5, 2015. In the middle of this time period WoodCollector found himself in a Scam Accusation lodged against him by some very prominent members of the forum. If you've clicked the links at the top of this post you're already well aware of these accusations, if not I highly suggest you set aside about a half hour and laugh, smile, or cringe through those historic threads.
The forum was a much smaller space back in 2014/2015 and if you were active in these times you basically knew every name that frequented your area of the forum. This put the original buyers of these coins in a pretty rough position.. they either had to back WoodCollector or back the more well known members that started and maintained the scam accusation. Red trust was flung back and forth and the fight got pretty nasty at times. I remember watching from the sidelines as this all unfolded and I laugh time and time again when I go through my research and see the only post I made during the drama
here. The best part about it is that I now own this piece. (Too Long Didn't Click - I talk down about the finish used on Blazedout419's supposed $14,000USD piece "
The Hive").
Never in a million years did I figure I'd end up owning one of his coins, let alone all nine.
My journey starts in October 2017 with this auction here:
[AUCTION ends 14/10] - WOODEN BITCOIN - THE BLACK SWAN - BY WOODCOLLECTORA perfect snipe of XX:00:00 at the end of the auction landed me my first two coins
2 &
8. Not really knowing the size or heft behind these coins I immediately fell in love with them after opening the box and taking them out. It was at this moment I knew I was going to try the impossible and collect all nine.
Questions in my mind arose whether or not people would have kept these.. with all the bad blood and negativity surrounding them I figured somebody may have set theirs on fire, sold them in a garage sale to rid themselves of the memory, or worse maybe a coin were lost in the depths of the global mail system.. every possibility entered my mind to whether or not all nine still existed. Five original buyers.. five people that I would need to have kept these safe and intact for close to three years.. Impossible?
Fast forward eight months, June of 2018 I reached out to all of the original owners, some replied quick, others I waited and waited for a reply.
A sloppy notepad document titled 'WoodCollector Clues" placed on my desktop and every lead/clue/observation for each coin written down. Hours and hours of reading through posts I started to have an idea about who had what, initial bitcoin prices/conversions to USD, and anything else I deemed important at the time. This quest wasn't going to be easy as I started to figure out that not everyone still owned the coins that they had initially bought.
A couple days go by and I receive a message that one of the owners I contacted was willing to sell me their coin with a link to
here. Though I know that this member at one time owned three of the coins I figure I won't push the subject and just work with getting the one he is offering me right now. Replies back and forth go fairly smooth and before I know it this coin is on it's way to me. Still unsure if I should ask about the other two he had bought from WoodCollector I decide to leave it for now.
A quick trip to the post office and I'm back with a pretty heavy box, I tear it open and Coin 3 stares me in the face. Happy as ever I log into bitcointalk and notice an inbox message. Its the same guy who now shares with me that two of the coins were given away as gifts to their family members and that if I would like them he could work on getting them back. My reply sent back almost immediately, "Absolutely".
His mother and sister were gifted these three years previous and no way in my mind did I think somebody not interested or invested into bitcoin would hang on to these for this long.
A couple weeks go by and the sister is more than happy to return her coin.. mom wasn't as keen to give hers up but would consider it as long as we gifted her something else to fill the now empty spot where the coin used to sit. Not a problem, I upped the amount I was paying for the other two to make sure mom could put something in place of the coin.
Including the coin that this member had kept for himself this put Coins
3,
7, and
6 into my collection.
This put me at five coins in my collection with four coins left to go. One owner known, one missing, and two coins that were traded away and no longer with the original owner.
My next logical step was to reach out to the only one of the four that I knew still owned their coin. At first this member was reluctant to sell theirs to me for the price that I initially offered. Through conversation back and forth I pieced together quite a bit of information about the steps taken/not taken by the five original owners. I now knew that throughout the drama and after it had settled that they never did talk about getting together or sharing information about each of their pieces with eachother. The tale of the 5000btc regarded as 'likely fake' right off the bat. It was apparent that the initial drama had taken morale down quite a bit and the excitement about any tale of buried treasure had faded.
I sat on this for a month before I finally decided to offer the price that was initially asked for. A reply the next day came back with quite an interesting counter offer. The price was now somewhere in the middle of my initial offer and the asking price, however, they had eyes for
Coin 2 and a proposition was made in that once I were done examining the coins that I send them Coin 2 with the ability to have it shipped back to me in the future for re-examination if need be. Tempting... very tempting but I could not handle the idea that if I were able to finish this collection that one of these coins would not actually be owned by me. A few messages exchanged back and forth and a deal was struck with the full asking price and the option for first dibs on Coin 2 if I were to ever fall into financial trouble, lose interest in the collection, or decide to part them out if I failed to complete the nine. This added Coin
9 to my collection.
During this time period I had been scouring the post history of the last two owners, I had not received a reply back from either of them so it was up to me to try and piece together a timeline or any information I could. I decided to focus on the member that had purchased two of the coins back in 2015. Their post history didn't offer me any leads and their "Last Active" wasn't giving me any confidence either.. it seemed they had been taking a break from the forum for the time being. Now don't ask why but I decided to read through their Trust Ratings.. Trusted/Untrusted Feedback.. nothing about any trades for WoodCollector items.. scrolling down further into their Sent Feedback my eyes shoot wide open.. "
Traded some WoodCollector 'hand-carved' pieces....." dated September 2015. I look at who had received the feedback and my heart lifts.. quite a well known name in Collectibles community and very active.
I reach out to this member and am hit back with the confirmation that they do still own these two coins. I read further and my heart sinks.. the price they are looking for is well over anything I've paid yet (I'd been pretty generous with my offers previous). The fact is in the original scam accusation threads this member was somewhat on the front lines in the feud with WoodCollector.. these pieces actually had some real life(forum) meaning to them.
Time and patience has been the main contributing factor in getting as far into this tale as I have so I left off with a simple, "let me know if you're ever in a position to sell".
Five months go by and this member was working on his next collectible release to the community and we get to chatting again. I end one of my messages with a lowball tease offer compared to what he initially asked for.. he replies that he would actually entertain a sale as he had just fully funded his next project and after the release any desire to sell his two WoodCollector coins would be basically non-existent. A trade deal that consisted of a loaded Casascius coin, an original Kialara bar, a loaded BTCC Titanium coin, and some additional bitcoin was reached and Coins
1 and
4 put the collection at eight of nine collected.
Now.. the last guy/girl. It had appeared the account was hacked or sold sometime in 2017 as the posts turned from things a regular person would say into things that someone selling accounts/scamming people over skype and telegram would say. I turned to focus on all of his pre 2017 posts to look for anything that could connect him with anything really. (Side note - In this time period the scammer did actually contact me back asking me how many accounts I would like to buy and for how much. Confirming that this was not the regular owner of the account).
I noted down speech patterns, unique misspellings, shitcoin projects they supported, and any language differences they used in their earlier time on bitcointalk before the account was stolen. After having what I considered a pretty good background check on this guy I started following reddit and twitter links they had posted. One reddit link in particular stuck out as they had made an attempt to brigade it for upvotes so I figured this person may have been one of the people posting there. The thread dated back to 2014 and consisted of twelve posters.. this seemed like a lot of work that would end unfavorably. I clicked into each poster's profile and started putting my knowledge of my documented posting habits to the test. One in particular stood out and matched a few things I had noticed from their bitcointalk behavior.. I shamelessly messaged them with an obscure "Hey, just wondering if you own WoodCollector Resolute?". Vague enough that a scammer would have no idea what I am talking about and hopefully not have them attempt to try to lead me on down a trail of attempted scamming.
Two months go by without a reply. I had used a throwaway reddit account that I hardly logged in to after a few days went by but one day I check and the reddit envelope shows that I have a message.. I open it and read the message, "Yes I own this, why?".
Butterflies fill my whole body. Did I just stumble my way into finding the last coin I need?
The next month I spend making offers and waiting days at a time for a reply. This was the last coin I needed, I found this guy with sheer luck, I couldn't cheap out now and was basically at his mercy to be able to complete this collection. We finally come to an agreement, this coin costing me more than any coin I've bought yet but to be able to finish my quest I am completely fine with this.
We move from reddit, to telegram as they are more comfortable talking there.. everthing seems to be going according to plan but also slower than I'd want.. until one morning I wake up to a "teeGUMES, we have a problem. The coin is actually my wife's and I just talked to her and she doesn't want me to sell it". Obviously I figure this is just a scheme to squeeze a little bit more out of me but what can I do? I need this coin. As sexist/stereotypical as it sounds I throw out an offer of our original price + the price his wife would accept to buy herself a nice gift, I'm thinking jewellery, shoes or something nice. He says he will pitch it to her and after a few days they both accept. I get him back on bitcointalk and set up escrow and patiently wait. As is the story with this last coin the actual shipping of it takes a couple weeks to actually happen. I know based on the customs stamps that he didn't ship it when he said he did.. I truly believe he was going to come back at me again for another increase in price. Thankfully he eventually came through and that added Coin
5 which completed the WoodCollector public coin collection.
Nine coins, 475 days from the first one entering my house to the ninth one being torn out of its box. I set out to complete this collection and through an outstanding amount of time and patience I did just that. I can not express the feeling that went through me when I looked down at all nine of them together for the first time. Never before had these all been in the same country/town/city.. and now I look at them in the same room together.
Now supposedly there is a tenth, and if you've read through the links I had provided earlier you will know that there is not much if anything known about it, it may not even exist. The treasure may not exist (lets just say for a second it did, how many of us would have been running out to dig this buried capsule up during the 2017 bullrun).
My curiousity for this story took me through a crazy journey, talking with and meeting the owners of these coins. Each and every one of them was actually surprisingly kind and in the end they could see what I was trying to achieve by putting this collection together.. and most importantly each and every coin was damn near intact and in fairly mint condition.
With all this being said, you may think i'm an idiot for collecting these due to all the Scam/Fraud/Liar accusations.. but in my mind as long as nobody died or got hurt, drama adds a whole new level to the strange things we collectors like to collect.
Let me finish this all off with:
Hey Mr/Mrs. Coin Ten, if you're out there.. lets talk
I've got a treasure map and you've got the compass.
