Summer will come very soon, Kupala night, and you will need to go into the forest to look for a fern flower. But it's better to just take a metal detector and go for the treasure.

Where can you go for treasure in the Kuban?

Firstly, as knowledgeable search engines say - on the Black Sea coast, certainly. Hundreds of thousands of tourists flock here every summer. Every now and then visiting beachgoers lose valuable things: not jewelry, but phones.

Among the "beach diggers" there is still a legend about a successful treasure hunter from the city of Chekhov. The guy came to the Kuban and during the summer season he dug up 400 gold jewelry and more than 10 thousand coins, including old ones.

Secondly, you can search along the banks of the Kuban River. However, of course, the law is against. After all, gold jewelry of Scythian and Sarmatian origin was found there more than once! And archaeologists are constantly working in Gorgippia and Phanagoria, and not one of the expeditions can do without a valuable “catch”.

Thirdly, there are in the Kuban and real treasures. We will now tell you about the most important of them.

Property of the Kuban Cossack Rada

In 1918, confusion reigned everywhere in Russia. The Cossacks decided to move the property away from harm. They collected a convoy with gold from 80 carts and took it from Yekaterinodar. But the convoy left, and they saw it on the road from the city, but the carts never arrived at their destination. The current value of the missing treasures, according to some estimates, is 280 billion rubles!

Treasury of the Petersburg Loan Cashier

In 1917, the Provisional Government evacuated a pawnshop of national importance to the city of Yeysk. This cash desk kept coins made of gold and silver, jewelry with precious stones and rarities from antique collections. The most important treasure was the riza of the icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God with 4804 diamonds. And again the convoy disappeared when they had to flee from the "Reds".

The building of the St. Petersburg loan office today.

Treasure of noblewoman Galka

There is a folk legend that in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a woman lived in the village of Leningradskaya, who robbed fellow countrymen. She allegedly had direct access to food warehouses and exchanged products for gold rings, watches, coins, even for icon salaries. Rumor ascribes to Galka the possession of a 48-kilogram statue of the Pigeon Angel, made of pure gold with diamonds, rubies and black pearls.

As they say, the noblewoman (as the woman was nicknamed for her desire for a luxurious life), ended badly. Angry villagers walled her up alive in some basement. In this situation, it is strange to think that she managed to hide the gold. Is it left somewhere? Some believe that they walled up the Jackdaw just in it.

Other clades

According to verified historical sources, merchants and wealthy Cossacks lived in the Kuban. AT troubled times these people sought to save money and valuables, and hid them. But only a few were able to return for them.

Note that most often in the Kuban, treasures were not taken to the forest, but were hidden in secret places at home or buried in the garden. Until better times, the population hid the acquired good and in civil war, and in years Stalinist repressions.

So, as they say, “always dig, dig everywhere, dig on land and in water” - and maybe you are the lucky one to find one of the treasures that the Kuban land hides.

Memo to the treasure hunter. What to do if a treasure is dug up?

1. Take pictures of all finds.
2. Contact the police or the prosecutor's office, hand over the items under the inventory.
3. Get a treasure discovery act from law enforcement officers (valid only if there are three witnesses who will confirm the fact that it was you who found the treasure. In other cases, you can simply throw this piece of paper away and say goodbye to dreams of a reward).
4. Contact the local museum, arrange an examination.
5. You may be given a reward after a year, two or more. We need to hope and believe. If you find a valuable treasure alone, get 50% of its value.

Karachay-Cherkessia and Krasnodar region, through whose territory the Kuban flows, treasures are rich in envy. These lands, inhabited as far back as the 3rd millennium BC, were constantly subjected to invasions, and therefore people preferred to hide their property in secluded places. In the Middle Ages, many treasures were buried in cemeteries built under the Alanian temples and in the areas of ancient settlements. Almost every Cossack and mountain family keeps legends about the values ​​hidden by their ancestors after the October Revolution, during the civil war or during dispossession...

Capital under a reed roof

Here are two examples from my own family history.

In the early days of November 1932, my great-grandfather, the Kuban Cossack Ivan Fedorovich, had a vision. The angel, who appeared in the night, said that he should go through the villages and farms and call on the people not to join the collective farms, for terrible hunger, cold and pestilence await them. The great-grandfather, whom the Bolsheviks drove to the collective farm a year before this remarkable event, believed the angel. Before setting off on his crusade, Ivan Fedorovich called his beloved grandson Mishka and poured out a mountain of gold coins from a hefty leather pouch in front of a three-year-old kid from a hefty leather pouch: "Play, granddaughter ..."

The next day, great-grandfather left his native village and sank into the water. It became known about his further fate only in 1958, when people who had been in the Pyatigorsk prison in the 1930s with their grandfather returned from prison.

The great-grandfather carried out his "subversive" activities for a whole week before he was arrested. The verdict, compared to those passed at that time, was mild - for “anti-Soviet agitation to send to the North. edge for a period of 5 years. But Ivan Fedorovich never got to the North, because the GEP officers found out about the gold he had hidden. His great-grandfather was not going to give it away from the principle: "It was not they who made money - it was not for them to spend." Eyewitnesses said that they beat him severely and more and more on the head. My great-grandfather went crazy, and a month later he died of starvation. In the early 1960s, he was rehabilitated. Well, gold still lies somewhere in the ground.

Another treasure that our family knew about was found in the summer of 1959, when an old hut that belonged to my grandmother Pelageya Ivanovna was being demolished in Cherkessk. In the corner of a low attic, under a thick reed roof, my father found a huge earthen jar. The neck was tied with canvas and filled with resin. The jug was filled to the brim with tightly folded brand new banknotes (500 and 1000 rubles), and at the bottom of it were gold cufflinks and the same pin for a tie. For the sake of laughter, parents began to count the “capital” that had come in, reached 50 thousand and waved their hand. Crispy banknotes were poured into the wardrobe drawer, and the hairpin and pin were given to the grandmother.

The next day, my father decided to take the money to the museum. But the box was empty, only two pieces of paper with a portrait of Catherine II were lying around in the corner. It turned out that the grandmother burned the money. “These are my tears,” she said mournfully, and told the following story.

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Until February 1917, my grandmother's husband served in the bodyguard of the Russian autocrat, and she, along with her mother-in-law, lived in the village of Batalpashinskaya (now the city of Cherkessk). All the chores for a large household fell on the fragile grandmother's shoulders. Her mother-in-law was not only angry and quarrelsome, but also extremely stingy. She saved on everything - the household went in tattered clothes, the old woman kept them from hand to mouth, and all in order to fill the capsule with gold as tightly as possible.

During the civil war, my grandfather fought on the side of the whites. Once the wife of his commander came to Batalpashinsk for a short time. “I can’t imagine how this colonel managed to flatter her mother-in-law,” my grandmother recalled, “but she only changed all our gold, and there was oh so much of it, for banknotes that the old woman hid somewhere.” In 1920, the grandfather, who knew nothing, helped the colonel and his wife board a ship sailing from Novorossiysk to France, and he himself returned home to a broken trough. For the rest of his life, my grandfather remembered this exchange and cursed. And the grandmother, like a true Christian, consoled: “Perhaps gold helped these people in a foreign land ...”

On the ruins of an old fortress

In ancient times, Scythians and Sarmatians, Kipchaks and Khazars, Bulgars and Alans lived on the territory of Karachay-Cherkessia. The famous "Silk Road" passed here, along which the Romans, Byzantines and Genoese brought goods from India, China and Central Asia. Arabs, Huns and Mongols came here by war, destroying cities and villages.

Ancient treasures in Karachay-Cherkessia have been found repeatedly. At Soviet power people preferred not to tell anyone about their findings. Firstly, there were cases when the treasures were appropriated by the village and aul authorities. Secondly, with a favorable outcome, a person received the 25 percent due to him only after a few years. At the same time, medieval jewelry and other finds made of gold were evaluated as ordinary scrap - 11 rubles per gram.

According to the historian and local historian Lev Dolichek, who worked for many years in the regional, and then the republican museum, valuable (in material terms) items from the treasures were brought only three times.

There is a Khumarin settlement in Karachay-Cherkessia, a kind of archaeological Klondike. In the 8th century, the Khazars erected here a huge white-stone fortress, to match the Moscow Kremlin, with powerful walls and 12 towers. The impregnable citadel for a long time controlled the route along the Kuban and Teberda rivers to the Klukhor Pass and the Black Sea. In the XI century, Khumara became the center of Western Alania, a rich tribute was brought here for the Khazar Khaganate. In 1396, the fortress was turned into ruins by the troops of Emir Timur (Tamerlane). Probably, before the assault, the defenders of the fortress hid some valuables in underground safes-hiding places. One of them was accidentally discovered in the late 1950s, when a farm began to be built in the area of ​​the Khumarinsky settlement.

The workers stumbled upon a mysterious dungeon, the entrance to which was closed by a giant slab. It was possible to move it only with the help of a tractor. Huge circles of petrified wax were found in the dungeon. Workers of the local general store melted down the circles and overfulfilled the plan for the delivery of wax to the state. According to people's rumor, jewelry was also found in the dungeon, but the workers kept silent about them. Only a unique Byzantine gem was received from the village teacher Stepanov from the disappeared treasure. Her teacher, a fanatical lover of history, begged her from the workers, or they themselves gave him a stone - a mystery shrouded in darkness.

Lev Dolichek says: “It was a huge rauch-topaz of a brownish-smoky color. On one side, a half-length image of Jesus Christ is carved. The work is the thinnest, you can see the hairs on the beard. The magnificent trihedral cut of the stone gave a stunning three-dimensional image. I still do not understand how the master managed to achieve such an effect. Judging by the chips on the stone, the gem was adorned with a gold or silver panagia that belonged to a high-ranking clergyman.”

One can only guess what else was in the Khumarinsky treasure...

The second treasure was found near the village of Druzhba, when the shore of the Kuban washed away by water collapsed. Children playing nearby found strange "pieces of iron" in the collapsed earth. They took them to the teacher, and he went to the museum with the find. The Scythian-Sarmatian treasure consisted of massive gold jewelry - brooches, hryvnias, bracelets.

Then, in the center of the Malokarachaevsky district, while digging a foundation pit, 12 burial grounds from the early Middle Ages were unearthed. The district committee of the party immediately informed the archaeologists in Cherkessk about the find, but because of a snowstorm, they could only reach the burial grounds in the evening. And got to the cap analysis. Archaeologists received several items that the district committee workers managed to take away from the boys: a rare amber necklace - each bead is the size of a small chicken egg; delightful women's breast ornaments with gold facings and beads made of magnificent carnelian.

In Search of the Grave of Queen Tamar

legendary queen Tamar, under whom Georgia became the most powerful state in the Middle East, died on January 18, 1212. She bequeathed to bury her secretly. After the funeral of the queen in the cathedral church of Mtskheta, the slaves, accompanied by soldiers, carried ten coffins in different directions. Which of them contained the remains of Tamar and where they were interred is still unknown.

According to one version, the queen was buried in Western Alania, which at that time was in vassal dependence on Georgia, in the homeland of her Circassian nurse. However, most historians do not agree with this.

Today, in search of a mausoleum adorned with precious sculptures, where Queen Tamar lies in a golden cradle, where the treasury is kept Georgian kingdom, local and visiting treasure hunters plundered many ancient burials.

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In one of the regions of Karachay-Cherkessia, rich in ancient burial grounds, their looting peaked in the mid-1980s. This was done by about two dozen guys who wandered through the mountains and valleys singly and in groups. They worked so hard that today throughout the district you will not find even a hint of a hillock.

At first, many seekers could not even recognize the gold. There was a case when a guy found a large, the size of a man's palm, a heavy petal made of yellow metal. He cut it into pieces and began to laugh with friends, saying, look what kind of "gold" I found. The local chemist checked it - it's real. The bursting treasure hunter tried to return his pieces, but no luck...

According to eyewitnesses, gold was often found in burials. In some graves, up to 100 items were taken, while many of the finds were in excellent condition. One treasure hunter boasted that the Scythian figurines of animals, combs and bowls he found were not inferior to the specimens kept in the Hermitage. There was a rumor that someone even got an ingot weighing eight kilograms. (It is possible that in ancient times gold was mined along the valleys of the Kuban, Teberda, Bolshoy Zelenchuk rivers, where there were placers and ore deposits. In 1933, a gold-platinum industry began to develop in those parts, even a nugget of two kilograms was found, but after the war gold mining stopped.

At first, gold was sold to private dental technicians and jewelers. And when they found out the real value of the antiquities, they began to carry them to the underground markets in Tbilisi and Simferopol.

They say that the first expensive foreign cars in the republic appeared precisely at grave diggers. They were the first to build European villas - with underground garages, swimming pools, lawns. But the misfortunes behind the walls of these mansions happened somehow suspiciously often. Close relatives of gravediggers suddenly died or fell ill with cancer, sick children were born.

There was a case when a guy, having decided to win the heart of his beloved girl, gave her a necklace made of semi-precious stones and ceramic beads found in a plundered burial ground. Girlfriends persuaded the girl not to accept the gift, but she did not listen. The couple got married. Soon the guy, a rare healthy man, suddenly died ...

No matter how anyone treats these "coincidences", but many "deserved" grave diggers have ceased to desecrate the graves. Now the unemployed youth do it, and the “old men” sell the loot.

Treasures of the dead brought many disasters to Krasnodar seekers as well. A vivid example of this is the tragic story of Andrei Chamkin from the village of Kazachiy Brod.

In 1997, Chamkin found a treasure of 26 items in the area of ​​the ancient sanctuary - swords, helmets, shield decorations, bowls, bracelets, etc., made of bronze, copper, silver and gold. Andrey tried to sell some of the things to Sochi collectors. This became known to employees of the Krasnodar FSB. They pretty quickly "figured out" the treasure hunter. Andrey had to hand over the find to the state.

The Hermitage restorers came to the conclusion that the items found were made in the 5th-4th centuries. BC. skilled Greek craftsmen. In terms of value, the find can only be compared with the famous gold of Troy. The insurance cost of antiquities is one million dollars.

Nobody punished Chamkin for concealing the treasure, on the contrary, he was paid a reward. It would seem, live and rejoice. Instead, a thirty-year-old man, drunk, committed suicide. Some time later, three of his relatives, who were involved in the search for the treasure, also died.

Treasures of the Kuban Rada

In the Krasnodar Territory, they are looking not only for ancient treasures, but also for the gold of the Kuban Rada. According to local legends, the history of these treasures is as follows.

In May 1918, under the onslaught of the Red Army, the troops of the Kuban Rada left Krasnodar, taking with them the government treasury and relics of the Kuban Cossack army. Relics (12 boxes of jewelry) the Cossacks managed to take out in 1920 abroad. The rest of the treasures were hidden in several places. According to one version, they may be located: a) in the old dungeon (a labyrinth two kilometers long) in the village of Novoshcherbinovskaya; b) in the area of ​​the Pshaf ridge; c) at the bottom of the sea near Novorossiysk, where the crew intentionally flooded destroyer"Loud". In favor of the existence of treasures in these places is evidenced by the frequent visits there by the descendants of the Cossacks, who emigrated in the early 1920s to France, the Czech Republic, Australia and Argentina.

Many treasure hunters are skeptical about this version. In my opinion, it has the right to exist. And that's why.

In the mid-1990s, a modest middle-aged couple approached the editorial office. “We have been reading your newspaper for several years and we know that you wrote about the search for treasures and about the work of the FSB,” the husband began. - Therefore, you have acquaintances in the special services and treasures are also of interest to you. We found a treasure and want to hand it over to the state. Set us up with reliable people from the leadership of the FSB, and you will have the opportunity to be present at the transfer of the treasure and write an interesting article.

I had acquaintances in the FSB. However, before disturbing them, one should have an idea of ​​the treasure. The couple desperately did not want to talk about the find. It took time to persuade.

The spouses, who lived in one of the large cities of the Krasnodar Territory, had an old relative on some distant farm. She lived out her life alone - her husband disappeared while still in civilian life, her son died in 1941. Spouses from time to time visited her: they would bring medicine, then they would help with the housework. On one of his visits, my husband decided to replace several half-rotten wooden floorboards in my grandmother's hut. And stumbled upon gold bars. The old woman was not told about the find. But, asking her about the old times, they learned that during the civil war, when she was in a neighboring village for a funeral, her husband came to the farm, and with him the Cossacks. The next day, this army hastily left the farm. And after a while the red ones came. Most likely, the retreating Cossacks hid the treasure.

The wife refused to name the number of ingots. When I asked why they didn't want to report the find local authorities, the woman began to explain with tears that they would not have time to get to the house, when the bandits would find out about the treasure. And the husband suddenly blurted out in despair: “Yes, how can you not understand, there are several boxes in the same place !!! Yes, anyone will commit a crime for them!

I arranged a meeting with the FSB officers, but at the appointed time, my Krasnodar people did not call. The further fate of the spouses and gold bars is unknown to me.

As for the gold of the Kuban Rada, allegedly located in the holds of the destroyer Gromky, a month ago I was told that some scuba divers were “cleaning” a ship that had sunk near Novorossiysk. At the curious who try to approach them, they open fire without warning ...

“In the village of Urupskaya, on a slope near the garden of officer Daniil Ermolaev, where there is a spring, three large oak trees grew, between which a treasure was buried by a soldier who was captured by the highlanders”

Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, fund 337

“In the village of Ivanovskaya, old stories about the following have been preserved:

a) somewhere in the military Red Forest there is a robber treasure of gold in two barrels, chained with iron chains to an age-old tree. Some even accidentally saw these chains in the foliage - they were frightened, and when, having plucked up courage, they returned, they could not find this tree;

b) mounds - one in the village itself, on the banks of the Bolshoi Estuary, called Kendrikova's grave, the other in the yurt of the village near the Kuban River called Burnosov's grave - received the name from the robbers who lived in them, and treasures were buried in these mounds ”

The stories have received numerous confirmations from our readers. This time we will talk about legends from different parts of the Krasnodar Territory - unlike previous issues, this is so famous stories what everyone knows about them local child. If you did not know, then something very important was being hidden from you.

papaya boy

AT late XIX century one merchant went to the sea with his family. Passing through the village of Ubinskaya, he decided to climb to the top of the local mountain Papai. The merchant hired a guide and set off with his family. The weather was good, and by lunchtime the travelers had reached the summit, from which an amazing view opened up. As soon as the family had dinner, fog descended on the mountain, then the wind rose, clouds swooped in and a terrible downpour fell. People in a hurry gathered and quickly went down to the side of the mountain. And only below they noticed that one person was missing - the merchant's youngest son had gone somewhere. Until evening, his father, along with servants and guides, searched for him all over the slope. The next day, a search party was equipped, which began to comb the mountain and its environs.

The search continued for several days. The merchant sent his family home to Novorossiysk and, together with a detachment of faithful servants, continued the search expedition. For days on end, he wandered the slopes from morning to evening - and one evening he returned to the village in a changed mind. His eyes burned with madness, he repeated only one phrase: "He came for me." A day later, the merchant died of a terrible fever.

Since locals often saw footprints of bare feet in the forest, heard children crying and laughing, and at night people began to lose candies and sweets. And now, tourists staying overnight at the foot of Mount Papaya are advised to leave sweets and cookies in front of the entrance to the tent so that Papaya Boy does not climb inside. It is believed that the one who sees the boy or touches him will lose his mind until the end of his days. However, you won't have to suffer for long. They say that those who fell ill with papaya fever could not stand even three days and died in terrible agony.

One-Eyed Truck

In the late 1980s, an old GAZ-63 began to be noticed in the foothills of the Caucasus. A dirt-splattered car with bald tires and a broken headlight. In a word, nothing special, if not for the fact that no one else saw the people who got into this car. The truck was showing up early morning or late in the evening, drove about fifty meters along the road and stopped for a few minutes. If no one showed up, he left. But if his driver was waiting for a late traveler or a drunken tourist, he would definitely offer to give the poor fellow a lift. Unsuspecting people jumped into the back of a truck and drove off into the darkness, disappearing into it forever.

At first, they did not pay much attention to the disappearance of rare tourists, but when in May 1989 an entire tourist group of students from one of Moscow universities disappeared, they sounded the alarm. The one-eyed truck hid and began to appear much less frequently (and only late at night). Tourists stopped seeing him, but continued to hear him. People approaching the Pshad waterfalls late in the evening often heard the roar of the engine, the sound of wheels driving through the mud, but at the moment when the truck was supposed to turn around the corner, the sound disappeared. The most curious, at their own risk, went to see what happened to the car, but there was no one around the corner. Tourists have heard the sound of the truck for several years, but no one has been able to see it. After a while, the story was forgotten, and the roar of the engine was no longer heard in the wilderness of the night. Only horror stories about the past appearances of the truck and its victims remained.

In April 1995, near the village of Novosadovoye, an old GAZ-63 was found standing alone in an abandoned plot. Despite searching, the owner of the car could not be found. A pair of bloody sneakers, a guitar and an empty port wine bottle were found in the back of the car. The right headlight of the truck was broken...

Gold of the Kuban Council

The Kuban Republic inherited gigantic funds from Tsarist Russia - gold and silver bullion, diamonds, gems, pearls and precious church utensils, as well as valuable artifacts of the Zaporozhye and Kuban Cossacks. In May 1918, the government troops of the Kuban Rada, leaving Yekaterinodar, to which the Reds were approaching, took out all these valuables on 80 wagons. Relics, and these are 12 boxes of valuables, the Cossacks managed to smuggle abroad in 1920. The rest of the treasures were hidden in several places.

The top-secret operation, in which only a few people were privy, was personally led by the chairman of the Kuban Rada, Nikolai Ryabovol. Knew about these treasures and General Denikin. He tried to find out from Ryabovol the place where the treasure was kept: the white movement needed gold, which would allow the fight against the Bolsheviks to be launched with renewed vigor.

However, they say that Ryabovol himself had his own plans for this treasure - he believed that the jewelry would be useful to the young Kuban Republic, and was not going to share it with the whites. According to rumors, he was killed for this. His closest associates were also killed (coincidence?), together with whom he is believed to have hidden the treasure, the value of which is estimated by experts at $5 billion. Baron Wrangel was looking for the Rada's gold, and Dzerzhinsky, who sent a special commission of the Cheka to Krasnodar in 1921, tried to find the treasure, but neither the Whites nor the Reds managed to find traces of the treasure.

Where to look for 40 tons of jewelry (namely, as many, according to eyewitnesses, were taken out of Ekaterinodar)? There are several supposed places: a dungeon near the village of Staroshcherbinovskaya, the village of Shendzhiy, the village of Kaluzhskaya, the Pshaf ridge. According to one version, the gold is at the bottom of the Tsemess Bay, where in June 1918 the crew of the destroyer Gromky deliberately sank their ship, which, following a top-secret plan, was supposed to evacuate the gold abroad. The ship is still lying in the Tsemess Bay, three miles from Shirokaya Beam at a depth of 42 meters. In 1947, while performing mine clearance work in the bay, the destroyer was found lying on the ground on the port side and divers examined it. Due to the severe corrosion of the hull, superstructures and mechanisms, raising the ship for subsequent disposal was deemed impractical.

Despite the fact that the fate of the gold of the Kuban Rada has remained unknown for almost 100 years, attempts to find it do not stop to this day. They received a new impetus after the return of the regalia of the Kuban Cossacks from America. Most of them were brought to the Kuban from April 2007 to May 2008. A total of 273 items were donated from the US. Ataman maces were of particular value. It was on them, according to legend, that secret signs were applied, with the help of which the place of the treasure was encrypted.

They say that museum specialists, on the orders of the secret services, found and almost deciphered these signs. Only one link is missing - the mace of the legendary ataman Ivan Sirko. The last Prime Minister of the Kuban People's Republic and the ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, Vasily Ivanis, took her out of Yekaterinodar in 1920 in his suitcase. He lived in the Czech Republic and then moved to Canada. Before his death in 1974, Ivanis donated the symbol of power of all Cossacks to the College of St. Andrew in Winnipeg. But at the same time, he bequeathed: if the Kuban defeats the communist infection and becomes part of Ukraine or becomes independent, the Canadians should return Sirko's mace to Yekaterinodar. And if Ukraine gains independence without the Kuban, transfer it to the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum. Since then, not only historians of Ukraine and Russia, but also adventurers from all over the world have been dreaming about the return of the mace. The key to the $5 billion treasure has haunted them for almost a hundred years.

Pshad maiden

The legend about the ghost of a maiden, which has been met by tourists and locals for many years in the area of ​​​​the village of Pshada, 32 km southeast of Gelendzhik, has been known for more than a dozen years. This is one of the most mysterious places throughout the region - more than 70 dolmens were found here, many of which are 5 thousand years old. And the name of the river Pshada is translated from the Adyghe as "shrouded in fog."

According to legend, many years ago two warring tribes lived in those places, and one day the girl Pshada met a guy from another tribe. The guy's name was Popeye. When the parents of young people found out about the hobby, some locked Pshada under lock and key, while others sent Papai to war. When the girl was informed that her lover had died, she put on her wedding dress and threw herself into the abyss of the waterfall.

Exists alternative version: the girl's name was Zulikhan, and her lover from a hostile tribe was Asker. Young people met at the fair, fell in love and secretly met near the waterfall. Father Zulikhan found out about the connection, wrote a letter to Asker on behalf of his daughter, and when he came to the waterfall, he killed the guy by throwing him into the waterfall. Zulikhan, sensing something was wrong, ran to the waterfall and, seeing the body of her lover, also rushed down.

Be that as it may, since then the ghost of Pshada has been hunting tourists and, bringing them to the waterfall, throws them down. The locals, who often see a translucent female silhouette, called the ghost the Pshad Maiden. The villagers believe that the maiden does not touch the locals, but it is better for tourists not to meet the ghost at night. Rumor has it that after evening walks to the waterfall, no one else saw several people.

Some believed in this legend, some considered it a tale, but in 2015 the whole country learned about the maiden when they showed on NTV video recording made by tourists in the Pshada area. The footage clearly captures a translucent female silhouette. They wanted to show the video to video editing specialists, but the source of the recording mysteriously disappeared.

Damn mine in time

The surroundings of Pshada can rightly be called the most mysterious place on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory. Not only the ghost of a maiden lives not far from Novosadovoe, and millennial dolmens are located - there is also a mysterious anomalous mine. Its diameter is about one and a half meters, the walls look like melted, and no one knows the exact depth.

Yu. Kharchuk, V. Loza, D. Shilkin "Advice from the Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk to beginner treasure hunters" Krasnodar, Publishing Center "Fleur 1", 2001

What is treasure and who are treasure hunters? Search for treasures on the beaches of the Kuban. Where were the treasures hidden and where to look for them? The legal side of the search for treasures and treasures. This and much more you can read in this book.

Yuri Kharchuk, a resident of the village of Leningradskaya in the Krasnodar Territory, is a unique person in his own way. A beekeeper by education, a treasure hunter by vocation and profession.

As Yuri Ivanovich himself assures, in order to search for treasures, it is not necessary to go to an island lost in the ocean. There are a lot of caches, caches and forgotten egg-pods both within the Garden Ring, and in any central black earth village, and on the Black Sea beaches. For example, in Feodosia, during the demolition of an old house, a metal box was found immured in the wall. More than 150,000 rubles were found in the “box”, although not in gold, but in banknotes printed at the beginning of the last century. The main value of the treasure is that the banknotes turned out to be local, Crimean - issued by the “Russian Army” of Baron Wrangel. "White Guard" money, in contrast to the tsarist and even more so Soviet, is a rarity for which collectors are ready to pay a tidy sum in modern banknotes.

And in the Chuvash city of Alatyr, the treasure literally lay underfoot. Local boys found a scattering of old coins... in a pile of earth intended for a lawn.

But, of course, the most interesting thing is to discover what “they have been looking for for a long time and cannot find” - legendary treasures and countless treasures. We will talk about the most famous and elusive of them.

Have you not seen a gift from the Don Cossack?

Stepan Razin only in school history books looked like a disinterested fighter for the happiness of the people. The people themselves made up legends about the countless treasures stolen by Stenka and buried by him somewhere on the Volga. However, those enchanted treasures ...

Legends are legends, but here is a historical fact: in 1671, after the execution of the chieftain, by decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, an expedition was equipped to the Volga Zhiguli mountains. It was not for nothing that the governors reported to the sovereign that in the Persian campaigns and in the Russian turmoil, "the robber stole a lot of good things." Together with the sovereign's people, Stenka's brother, Frol Razin, was sent to the Volga ...

Information for reflection: the historian and archaeologist I.Ya. Stelletsky estimated the cost of "every good" at 10 million rubles in gold.

Frol did not help those senton a search. The only thing we managed to find out was that Stenka's beloved, Alena, and the closest associate of the ataman, Yesaul Luka Cherepok, made sure that the treasure was hidden in advance. But the Yesaul died, the traces of Alena the Vatazhnitsa were lost. Frol was executed as unnecessary.

According to legend, Alena managed to hand over a map indicating the Stenka treasure to the "Russian Swede" - Baron von Rode. Augusto Hieronymus von Rode is a remarkable person in himself. A Scandinavian aristocrat, adventurer and former corsair, he swore allegiance to the Moscow Tsar and moreover - he was appointed tax collector in the Volga provinces, and at the same time, the ex-pirate made friends with the rebellious Cossack chieftain.

Before the start of the First World War, von Rode's great-great-grandson, military engineer Pyotr Myatlev, while examining family relics, discovered Razin's "letter" - a description of treasures buried at the Volga cliff, at the confluence of the Sok River into the Volga. Myatlev excavated at his own expense and found in the specified meta whole system of underground galleries. german war, and then the revolution and the civil war. In 1919, an officer of the Denikin army, Colonel Myatlev, died in the Tsaritsyno hospital, taking with him the secret of the Razin map.

One of the Razin caches was discovered before the First World War. In 1914, in Tsaritsyn, not far from the ancient Trinity Church, the earth collapsed. A dungeon about 4 meters deep and the entrance to the tunnel leading from the church to the Volga appeared in the light of day. It is known that in the 60s of the 17th century there was a pier on the river bank, to which the "Stenki Razin boats" moored, loaded with looted gold and silver. Coffins, bones were found at the bottom of the dungeon, but no traces of the treasure. Although, perhaps, treasures are under burial.

Another "Razin" legend dates back to the time of the Great Patriotic War. They say that during the battles near Stalingrad, after the bombardment, the banks of the Volga crumbled, and a battery of cast-iron cannons of three hundred years ago appeared before the eyes of local residents. At least one of them was filled to the top with jewelry. However, from - due to shelling, the find was again buried under a slipped layer of earth.This treasure has not yet been found...

When he came to the field

Well, Walter Scott set the task for the Russian treasure hunters! In the book "The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French", published in 1835, the novelist wrote: "He (Napoleon. - Ed.) ordered that Moscow booty, ancient armor, cannons and a large cross from Ivan the Great be thrown into Lake Semlevsky like trophies that he did not want to give back and which he did not have the opportunity to carry with him. Over time, this story has acquired details and has become almost unrecognizable. But the fact remains: when the Napoleonic army began its retreat from Moscow, it had a lot of wagons with trophies. Before Russian border she didn't bring them. There is also reliable information that Napoleon, during his flight along the Old Smolensk road, stopped in the village of Semlevo.

Semlevskoe Lake is surrounded by forest. Dead, black water, unsteady coast, solid quicksand. Not only fish, not even mosquitoes. Local residents and visiting treasure hunters explain this phenomenon by the fact that because of the large amount of silver in the water, all living things died. Silver is Napoleon's treasure.

The first to start searching in the late 30s of the 19th century was the governor of Smolensk, Nikolai Ivanovich Khmelnitsky, a great admirer of Walter Scott's work. He took money from the treasury to divert water from the lake. The treasure was never found, but ended up in prison for misappropriation of budget funds.

But the beginning of the "gold rush" was laid. Whoever did not look for treasures in Lake Semlevsky. In the twentieth century, for almost 20 years - from 1960 to 1980 - treasure hunters practically lived on the lake shore. groups, groups of scuba divers. But the researchers were never able to pump out the fat black silt from the bottom, and the idea slowly came to naught. Now groups of amateur treasure hunters come to the lake every year, but so far only a small piece of the bottom has been searched.

What is happy without a treasure?

In the south of Russia, only the lazy are not looking for treasures. Treasure hunters work mainly on the Black Sea coast, where ancient cities stood. Most often, shards are found, but coins are also found. However, we will not talk about antiquities, but about a treasure hidden in the ground quite recently - about the gold of the Kuban Rada.

This Cossack class organization was established in 1917 in the city of Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar). In 1920, the Red Army approached Yekaterinodar. The Cossacks were forced to flee to Novorossiysk. There were persistent rumors that as many as 80 carts of various goods were taken out of Yekaterinodar. There were shares of valuable monopolies, icons in precious salaries collected from all the churches of the Kuban, gold and silver that the tsarist government kept in Yekaterinodar to finance military operations, as well as other valuables accumulated over the centuries. The cost of this property, according to modern estimates, reaches 5 billion dollars.

The Cossacks planned to take the gold to Yeysk, and from there to transport it to the Crimea, but their troops almost got surrounded, so it was decided to hide the treasures until better times in the vicinity of Yekaterinodar. The chairman of the council, Nikolai Ryaboval, was engaged in this. In 1919, Ryaboval died in a drunken fight in Rostov-on-Don and took the secret of the gold with him to the grave.

The Cossacks retreated along the Tikhoretsk-Yeisk railway line. Treasure hunters from the Krasnodar regional public fund "Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk" are sure that they should look somewhere near the villages of Atamanskaya, Leningradskaya and Pavlovskaya. Now Yuri Kharchuk is examining numerous wells located in Oak Grove, which is near these villages.

A lot of blood was spoiled by the famous Norwegian traveler and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl to the treasure hunters. Suddenly he took it and came to Azov in 2001, located near the sea and buried himself in the ground. What were you looking for? He said - his own ancestors: perhaps, legendary aces once lived on the coast of Azov. They, they say, gave the sea a name, and then sailed north. But domestic treasure hunters saw a competitor in the Tour. The tour was digging on the Turkish rampart, and it is only 60 km from the place where the treasury of the Kuban Rada is tentatively buried. But in 2002 Thor Heyerdahl died. He did not have time to find traces of aces. The gold of the Kuban Rada is still in the ground. You can dig.

- How likely is it to discover the treasure of the Kuban Rada? - we ask the experienced treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk.

“The opportunity is great, it’s just that this treasure has “dispersed” to 70 places. Now parts of it can be found on the territory of the Republic of Adygea, Krasnodar Territory, Rostov Region and Crimea. There was a civil war, everything was stolen slowly: they’ll hide it there, then here,” Kharchuk sighs .

— But has any part of this treasure been found yet?

- Part - yes. Something was taken abroad - mostly documents, archives, gold coins.

“And this is only a small fraction of what can be discovered so far?”

- Of course, this treasure is estimated in billions! It is known that the values ​​of the Cossack Rada were taken out on 80 wagons, each of which could carry up to 700 kg. And then there were the diamonds...

White gold

Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak never served the golden calf, but by the will of fate, the name of the admiral turned out to be firmly, firmly connected with treasures.

After October revolution power young Soviet republic concentrated part of the gold reserves left over from the old regime in the banks of three cities: Moscow, Tambov and Saratov. Even after signing Brest Peace Lenin seriously feared the advance of the Kaiser's troops, and out of harm's way, the gold reserves were transferred to the Kazan Bank. And in vain: at the end of the summer, a Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion broke out in the Volga region, and on August 7 Kazan was in the hands of the White Guards and detachments of the Czechoslovak Legion.

The golden trophy of the whites was taken first to Samara, then in 40 freight cars to Ufa. And in October 1918 he showed up in Omsk. 45-year-old Admiral Kolchak at that time held the post of military and naval minister of the Socialist-Revolutionary government - the so-called Ufa directory. On November 18, 1918, the "gentlemen" overthrew the weak directory and proclaimed the admiral the Supreme Ruler of Russia. After that, the gold reserve was at the undivided disposal of Kolchak.

It was necessary to pay for weapons and uniforms supplied by the allies - the ruler of Siberia drew funds for retribution from the Americans, British and Japanese from this bottomless "purse". It is known for certain that Kolchak spent 242 million gold rubles (that is, about 184 tons of gold) ", this money settled in the safes of banks in the USA, Japan, England and France. Only in May 1919 did the Siberian government bother to issue an order on the inventory of gold. They counted 495.873 tons, which in monetary terms amounted to 695 million gold rubles. By the way, it is possible that that part of the stock was buried even before the inventory was carried out ...

From March to October 1919, Kolchak handed over another 217 tons of gold to the Japanese, however, the echelon with the last batch of "despicable metal" (32.8 tons) was pocketed by ataman Semenov. valleys and hills”; the admiral hurriedly leaves his capital - Omsk - with 29 wagons of gold. On the way to Irkutsk, 39 boxes disappeared: 20 at the Taiga station and 19 at the Tyret station. The total value of the missing person is 35 million rubles in gold. They say that gold should be looked for in the area of ​​the Sudzhenskaya-Birikulskaya, Yurga-Taiga and Taiga-Tyazhin stations in the current Novosibirsk region. Since it happened at the beginning of winter, most likely the treasure was not buried in an open field (after all, Siberia, 30-degree frosts!), But in one of the local cemeteries, in the crypt of the church.

There is a version that Kolchak's General Pepelyaev ordered some of the treasures to be transported along the Irtysh and Ob to Tomsk. However, due to the fact that the rivers were covered with ice early, the ship loaded with gold could only reach the village of Surgut, where the gold reserves were taken ashore and buried.

Be that as it may, after 80 years, traces of Kolchak's gold continue to be sought not only in Western banks, but also in the Siberian taiga. Although some skeptics (including, for example, the ataman of the Irkutsk Cossack army Nikolai Merinov) believe that the Bolsheviks discovered the gold in the 20s and managed to capitalize it a long time ago.

Seek and find

Treasure hunting is out of fashion these days. Not like in the last century - entire expeditions were equipped in search of forgotten treasures. But there are still romantic natures who, with trepidation, unfold old maps with caches marked with a cross. Not for self-interest, interest for ...

How often do treasure hunters discover treasures? - we ask the same question to Yuri Kharchuk.

- Very often, and now the real Klondike for treasure hunters is in Ryazan: old houses are being destroyed there. Almost under each of these two-story houses there was something buried in the 30s, during the collectivization. At one time, these were not such great values. Now, any engagement ring from tsarist times costs more than $1,000, and some “trinkets” in our time can be valued at $50,000 or more. And these are the values ​​that poor people could accumulate. And in the average family then there were 15 adults people count...

— What is the average “age” of treasures?

- The bulk of the treasures, at least in the Krasnodar Territory and in the south of Russia as a whole, come from the First World War and the revolution, when silver and gold coins began to be withdrawn from circulation. Generally speaking, valuables were actively hidden from 1914 to 1945.

- And the ancient treasures - Greek, Scythian - manage to be discovered?

- They find it. In Yeysk, for example, the shore crumbled, and then the treasure “went” - a lot of ancient coins were discovered. Moreover, their true value was not immediately determined. Now such an ancient gold coin can cost up to 30 thousand dollars.

- It is known that an ancient cemetery was discovered under the burned-out Moscow Manege. Have you been brought in as an expert on ancient treasures?

- What for? In Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, it is much less likely to find gold. It's not like in the Kuban. A thousand years ago, you still wore skins, and we minted a gold coin on Taman 2500 years ago.

The nearest plans of the Society of Treasure Hunters include the search for Denikin's gold (about 6 million euros), the collection of the St. Petersburg Mint (120 million euros) and, of course, the treasure of the Kuban Cossack Rada (according to preliminary estimates, as much as 5 billion!).
What is treasure and who are treasure hunters?

According to the definition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, a treasure is (in the first meaning) "things hidden, most often buried in the ground, not taken by the owner and later accidentally discovered. Valuable historical material."
The second meaning (legal) is treasure - “money or valuable items buried or otherwise hidden, the owner of which cannot be established or by virtue of law has lost the right to them. By law, the treasure becomes the property of the state. Persons who discover gold and silver coins, currency, precious stones and metals (in ingots, products and scrap), pearls, in cases prescribed by law, remuneration is paid.
The dictionary of the Russian language by S.I. Ozhegov is categorically laconic. The definition of the treasure is given in just one line. "Treasure - closed, hidden somewhere values."
But nowhere was the definition of the word "treasure hunter"! It is obvious that the definition of "treasure" in the TSB is incomplete, since the phrase "...accidentally discovered ..." is clearly incompatible with the concept of a treasure hunter, since for many, "search" (and not accidentally find) is a passion, a craft, and even meaning of life.
Having analyzed various information about treasures, finds and their owners, we will try (so far without any systematization) to list all kinds of search activities and answer the question: who should be called a treasure hunter.
All types of treasure hunting can be divided into two main groups - "field" and "urban", although the line between these types is very blurry. In winter, you can search in the city and collect information, and in the summer you can go to work in the field. In our classification, "field" will also include "underwater", since this type of treasure hunting in our country is not yet widespread. Now we will consider in detail, with a few explanations, we will analyze each type of search, assigning conditional names to them, some of which are already rooted in the lexicon of treasure hunters, and some may well claim a place in the future "Dictionary of treasure hunter".
"Beachers"- searchers combing sandy beaches at the end of a bathing day with metal detectors in search of small things that have fallen out of pockets, and if you're lucky, then jewelry. Obviously, a vacationer will not stir up all the sand around him in search of a fallen ruble, and women, as you know, often lose or forget either an earring or a chain, which are also not easy to find in the golden beach sand. According to various estimates, on a good beach day at the weekend you can "find" from 50 to 100 rubles a day, and if you're lucky, then jewelry or watches. Among professionals, this type of search is considered "frivolous pampering" and can be attributed to the hobby of beginners. However, there are also advantages here. Firstly, you can use the cheapest and simplest detector with a search depth of 5-10 cm. Secondly, "beach people" are real orderlies in the coastal zone. Exploring their sites, they clean the beach from countless metal corks from various drinks.
"Prospectors"- searchers, alone or collectively (artel), manually extracting, as a rule, by the artisanal washing method, precious metals and stones. This term has been known in Russia since time immemorial, but in modern dictionaries its definition is missing. Modern "prospectors" use, as a rule, highly sensitive metal detectors capable of finding a nugget the size of a poppy seed. They work mainly in the areas of former and existing mining enterprises, where industrial equipment is used to extract valuable metal, which often skips small things and sends them to dumps. These dumps are a real Klondike for "prospectors". Only such places are located either in the north or in Siberia, and such "search" is more suitable for the local population.
"Diggers"- researchers of dungeons, both ancient and modern urban underground communications. "Diggers" are often compared with speleologists - researchers of natural underground formations, caves, karsts, failures, etc. In part, this comparison is acceptable, since among the "diggers" there are many speleologists who, using the same equipment, wander in city labyrinths as "workout". Actually, the task of "search" is not set, but "diggers" sometimes get lucky. Exploring the dungeons of an old estate, they find ancient objects and tools, and having penetrated the city underground communications under one of the city's institutions, they found an archive hidden there during the war.
"Bugrovshchiki", or "Kurgans", - seekers directly involved in the excavation of burial mounds and other burial grounds in the form of mounds. Archaeologists began to study mounds in detail in late XVIII century, and in almost every of them, as a result of excavations, finds came across. These "search" are continued by modern "bugrovschiki", as they say, with the least strain of the mind. I saw a mound in the field - dig. The easiest and sometimes barbaric method is to hire a bulldozer in the village and demolish the hill. Finds really come across almost always, but how many disappear!
"Poleviki", or "diggers", - perhaps this is the most professional category of searchers, working from "legend to shovel". Analyzing some historical fact, studying documents, collecting all sorts of information and information, they determine more or less exact coordinates of the search and only then start work. This is also the most intelligent category of seekers, in whose arsenal is modern search technology, physical, chemical and even radiological search methods. Therefore, such seekers work either alone or unite in various clubs and unions. The tasks set before themselves, as a rule, are global. For example, the search for Napoleon's Moscow gold, which was carried out by a team under the patronage of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, or the search for gold from the Kuban Rada, which is being carried out by the KKOF "Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk" team.
"Grave Diggers", or "gravediggers", - this type of seekers was known back in Ancient Egypt and was simply called - grave robbers. And today there are "successors" of the ancient craft, looking for crypts in abandoned cemeteries, in which, as a rule, far from poor deceased were buried. The tombs, according to custom, were decorated with icons, and if the deceased was a woman, and even more so a girl, then they did not spare the decorations. This is the main prey of such "searchers". In general, "gravediggers" are notorious, because often human skulls are taken along with jewelry, which, after special processing, are sold as a specific souvenir. Apparently, there is a demand for such a "product".
"Trophy"- seekers of objects that are the consequences of wars, including weapons abandoned on the battlefields. Another category of "seekers" from the risk group. War trophies, as a rule, do not remain in the ground for a long time, so the finds of "trophies" date back to the period of the Second World War. Here and weapons, sometimes in excellent and working condition, various kinds of explosives, the shelf life of which is practically unlimited. It is unlikely that these "finds" would end up in collections. "Small things" in the form of helmets, badges and other elements of uniforms and equipment are taken as souvenirs. The "search" method is also very specific. The ground is pierced with a long (2.5-3 meters) metal rod. Contact with a hard metal object is considered as an excavation site. The excavation itself bears a barbaric character. It is known that Soviet soldiers carried cartridge cases with them, in which they kept notes with the data of a fighter in case of death. Finding the remains of Soviet soldiers, the "bounty hunters" practically destroy natural burial places, thus depriving special search teams of the opportunity to reduce the mournful list of unknown soldiers.
"The Archivists"- searchers for documents, information, information previously unknown or considered lost. This is a special category of seekers who work with a pen instead of a shovel, and instead of stuffy dungeons - in no less stuffy archives. Everyone knows the story of how Derzhavin, while sorting through the monastery chronicles, discovered The Tale of Igor's Campaign. And the discovery in the archive of any document or letter of an outstanding person for the archivist is a real treasure. And if you find a lifetime edition of A.S. Pushkin in a second-hand bookshop, and even with the autograph of the author, consider that you have a Maharaja's diamond in your hands - no less!
"Divers"- lovers of scuba diving. This category of seekers appeared relatively recently, since in Soviet times such a discipline as underwater archeology was simply absent, and underwater work was the prerogative of professional divers, who were mainly engaged in raising sunken ships. To date, the development of diving is hindered, perhaps, by one circumstance - the high cost of equipment and equipment for a scuba diver, but this direction has broad prospects. The coast of the Black Sea, especially in Gurzuf, Sudak and Kerch, is a real storehouse of antiquity.
Separately, it is worth considering the category of urban searchers, which includes several varieties according to the specifics of search activities and is united by a common concept.
"Housekeepers"- treasure hunters in various architectural structures, whether it is a residential building, an abandoned manor or a dilapidated church, and even an empty hut in the village. Such is the property of human nature: in order to survive with the least losses some kind of cataclysm, such as wars, revolutions, etc., a person hid his most valuable thing from prying eyes away, but closer to himself. It was not always possible to pick up the hidden, and it remained in places that the "burglars" chose to search for. According to these places in the houses, their code name. In a house that is being prepared for a major overhaul - "kape", after janitors and housing office workers, "marauders" appear, tearing off door handles, hecks and latches, which in old houses, as a rule, were made of bronze. Then "summer residents" appear, taking out doors, glass, parquet and pipes. And, finally, "caps" come - experienced seekers of hiding places in apartments, and there are many such hiding places: these are baseboards and door jambs, ventilation holes and walls, and the most favorite place is window sills.
"Attic"- seekers of hidden valuables in the attics. On the roof beams and in the ceiling backfill, luck sometimes smiles at them. Mainly cold and firearms.
"Underground"- a category of seekers similar to the previous one, but working in cellars, undergrounds and cellars. The finds are nearly identical.
In general, "burglars" are risky people, and if you do not have to come into unpleasant contact with janitors, homeless people or, God forbid, with a hiding recidivist, then the old house may well turn out to be a "gold mine".

Search for treasures on the beaches of the Kuban

Everyone knows that the Krasnodar Territory is located between two seas - the Black and Azov. Every year, at the height of the season, millions of vacationers flock to the Krasnodar Territory. According to the Krasnodar regional public fund "Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk", every tenth vacationer loses at least one gold jewelry during two to four weeks of stay at sea.
On the beach in the summer, you can search for coins, rings, gold chains, bracelets without a device - visual observation in the surf. Look at the land from the water. Golden objects are static, and sand and pebbles, constantly moved back and forth by the breaking wave, now expose, then again fall asleep these objects. The surf line is looked at mainly from land, and not from under the water.
In summer, on the seashore and on the beaches of rivers, it is very good to use metal detectors of the AKA Research and Production Company. These are the models "Sterkh-junior 7232", "Sarmat 7240", "Sterkh-master 7234", "Cornet 7250".
In the summer of 2000, a lot of treasure hunters from Moscow and St. Petersburg came to the Kuban with these models of metal detectors. The catch was amazing. One treasure hunter from the city of Chekhov, Moscow Region, found a metal detector "Sterkh-master 7234" in 4 months of searching on the coast Sea of ​​Azov near the city of Yeysk, there are more than 400 gold jewelry of various prices. And more than 10,000 coins of all times and peoples.
From September to December it is very good to look for treasures and lost items on the coast of the Primorsko-Akhtarsky region. Especially if storms, storms, hurricanes are walking. There is a slight tide at this point.
After low tide, you can walk along the earthy shore with the Sarmat 7240 metal detector and collect coins from the 5th century BC from the mud. e. to the coins of 2000. This area is very promising. Also very good promising places to search for beach treasures are Temryuk, Anapa, Novorossiysk, Kabardinka, Gelendzhik, Arkhipo-Osipovka, Dzhugba, Olginka, Tuapse, Lazarevskoye, Loo, Dagomys, Sochi, Matsesta, Khosta, Adler, rivers of big cities like Krasnodar , Ust-Labinsk, Kropotkin, Armavir, Krymsk, Abinsk, Slavyansk-on-Kuban, Temryuk.

The book can be ordered at:
353745, Krasnodar Territory, Leningradskaya Station, p/o No. 5, P.O. Box 19

For those who decide to do treasure hunting, it would be useful to master the first common truths. Without them - no luck!

Truth first. When searching for a treasure, you should always remember that in your hands there may be exhibits unique to science, which should be presented to specialists as soon as possible.

The truth is the second. Try at least for the first time to refrain from self-restoration of antiques found. This should also be done by experts.

Truth the third. Remember: you are a treasure hunter, not a marauder! Therefore, a wild, barbaric attitude towards nature and the surrounding world is unacceptable.
And now let's go directly to the classification of treasures. This knowledge will be useful in order to choose a search location.
Many people will smile when they hear the question, what is a treasure. Everyone seems to know what it is, but they cannot characterize it. So what is a treasure? It is well said what a treasure is, in the Dictionary of Numismatist for 1982 (a joint edition of Russia and Germany), where gold and silver coins and ingots, as well as chopped silver and jewelry, withdrawn from circulation for the purpose of accumulation and put into a vessel, a casket, a chest, etc., and found during the cultivation of the earth, digging ditches, demolition of old buildings and objects. They hit the nail on the head.

Treasure- these are valuable objects of cultural and financial activity of a person accumulated in one place, which were hidden from the prying eyes of other people. It is logical to say that the owner always hid the treasure from strangers in secluded places. It has always been searched for, whether in the Middle Ages or the “quiet” 20th century.
And what can be treasures? Treasures are not only monetary (of gold, silver, platinum and copper), but also combining coins, and precious stones, and precious metal ingots, jewelry. Treasures that include only coins or precious metal ingots (or jewelry) without any other admixture are homogeneous treasures, while treasures containing objects of various values ​​are mixed treasures (Fig. 1). Both mixed and homogeneous clades are found always and everywhere, in all countries of the world. In addition, the treasure bears the name of those items that it consists of, for example: a coin treasure, a jewelry treasure, an ingot treasure, etc. They also bear the names of the places where they were found, or are named after the one who was the original owner or hid treasure, butmore about this in the next part, and now we will get acquainted with the classification of treasures.
Treasure large sizes(more than 100 items), placed in large chests or barrels, is called a treasure (Fig. 1). Treasures are rare, and their value exceeds the usual value of a treasure - a treasure hunter who finds a treasure provides himself with a comfortable life for several decades, or even for his entire life. Remember the treasures of the Incas and Aztecs in America, which have not yet been found and torment the minds of all treasure hunters in the world. Treasures of the Scythian kings Achilles' heel» Russian treasure hunters. And the treasures of Troy?
An ordinary treasure (Fig. 1) contains less than 100 items (from 20 to 90). The cost of an ordinary treasure does not exceed 5 thousand rubles, and the treasure costs more than 5 thousand rubles and its price is measured in foreign currency. The treasures of the Kuban Rada, for example, are valued at over $5 million. But these are general, or rather, private arguments. A hoard containing less than 20 items, namely from 5 to 19 items, is a small hoard (Fig. 1). There are many small treasures in those places where wealthy peasants lived, who were called "kulaks" after the 1917 revolution.
There are treasures of very small size - mini-hoards - containing from 2 to 5 items. These treasures are found even more often in places where ordinary peasants or burghers live. There are also unusual mini-hoards, consisting of 1.5 items. Are you surprised? Yes, 1.5 items - a coin along with a half or a quarter of a coin. They are common among the people, but they are mistaken for damaged coins or coins used for medical purposes. You know that coins made of copper, and copper in general, heal fractures and are rubbed for ingestion. And they erase thoroughly - up to half a coin. But these coins are easy to distinguish from specially broken ones. Why break coins? In very ancient times, for commodity-money relations, merchants needed small coins, and coins of large denominations Lasted or were cut into pieces - halves, quarters. They are found more often in Asian hoards - Persian, Iranian, Indian. They were the first to use “cutting”, later they switched to a separate circulation of small coins - money, pennies, half a penny, but more on that in the following chapters - about coins. And the coins were also divided to... determine the conformity of the treasure. The owner of the treasure, or the one who pawns it, takes a coin from the treasure (usually the most conspicuous and in good condition), cuts or saws it into two parts. He puts one in his pocket, and on the other he makes certain notes and lays it near the treasure. Often together with a whole coin. Among the people, such a mini-treasure of 1.5 copies is called a “treasure companion” (Fig. 1). And if a coin or a jug is found in one copy? Usually these are lost or hastily hidden single copies. There are also specimens that are more expensive than the usual treasure, they are called the only ones. A treasure can also be a collection of old (antique) things, such as church books, icons, porcelain, etc.

The other day, 15 miles from Evpatoria, the ship Boy Feddersen sunk in 1943 with treasures stolen by the Nazis was discovered. Like any news about a found treasure, this event had a great resonance. The first descent to the bottom is planned for the second half of May. Let's not guess about the dignity of the Crimean treasures, because in the Kuban there are many legends about buried treasures.

Treasures from holidaymakers

"Dig always, dig everywhere, dig on land and in water!" - this is the informal motto of the treasure hunters of the world. Everyone in childhood dreamed of finding treasures, as in the books of Jules Verne and Robert Stevenson. At the same time, a rare child was interested in the material value of treasures. Another thing is adults. Some people imagine in reality how, digging holes for potatoes in the garden, they come across something hard with a shovel. And ... Ba-ah-ah! Bowler hat! And there is gold, diamonds in it ... How cool treasures would change life! Most are just imagining. But there are also those who pick up a metal detector, a shovel and go “listen to the ground” and dig. Of these, well-known Kuban treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk. He is one of the first who began to develop a "gold mine" in the region. Partly - on land, but things went easier and more successfully at sea.

Director of the Novorossiysk Historical Museum-Reserve Larisa Kolbasina:

Most often, they brought us fragments of shells, weapons, and other attributes of the times of the Great Patriotic War. With such finds, there is a rule - first they must be submitted for examination to the military commissar, to be convinced of their safety and uniqueness. We received the last coin treasure in 1986. Now the flow of visitors who come to the museum with finds has begun to decline. Young generations are more interested in electronic gadgets. And professional search engines are engaged in the search for artifacts, they seek to organize their own museums.

Every summer, millions of vacationers flock to the Black Sea coast. According to Kharchuk's observations, in a couple of weeks of rest, every tenth resort visitor loses at least one gold piece of jewelry. So why not look for missing things? The chances of success increase many times if you take into service little secret. Rings, chains, bracelets, etc. are clearly visible if you look for them while in the water. They don't really move! Sand and pebbles, driven back and forth by the surf, then expose them, then again fall asleep.

The treasure hunter recalls that the year 2000 was the most "fruitful" for such treasures. The reason is that on Russian market affordable metal detectors appeared. The most successful in that season was a visitor from Chekhov. For four months of "tour" on the Sea of ​​Azov, he "obtained" more than 400 gold jewelry, including very expensive ones. And more than 10,000 coins, including old ones.

Is this activity related to treasure hunting? People who rummage around the beaches answer confidently: “Yes!” But perhaps a more appropriate word is gathering? Those who lost their property would formulate even more harshly: "Theft!"

Important! Any find, from the point of view of the Civil Code, is someone's loss, which the law obliges to return to the owner. The problem is that engraving an address and phone number on an earring is unrealistic. According to the same Code, the finder is obliged to take the find to the police. If the owner of the thing does not appear within six months, the find becomes the property of the finder.

At the workplace - no treasure to be seen

But we also find real treasures! Not later than in November last year, on one of the central streets of the village of Starominskaya, they dug a trench under the heating main. became the hero of the day excavator Sergey Lukyanov. At a depth of just over a meter, he crushed a glass bottle (capacity with a bucket) with a ladle. Literally rammed into a bottle of coins and banknotes and fell down! The whole brigade fled. What to do, how to be? We called a famous collector. He said: "A bucket of royal money is a jeep!" The jeep is not divided into a brigade, and the hard workers decided that the place of the find was in the museum.

Candidate of Historical Sciences Igor Vasiliev:

The history of our region is rich and unique. Archaeologists have repeatedly found gold jewelry in Scythian and Sarmatian mounds. In Gorgippia and Phanagoria constantly work archaeological expeditions and none of them is complete without a valuable "catch" of interest to science. One of the mysterious, never solved mysteries is the fate of the property of the Kuban Cossack Rada. In 1918, the golden convoy simply disappeared on the road from Yekaterinodar. The present value of the hidden or plundered treasures is, according to some estimates, equal to five billion US dollars! And how many bylicheks are in the Kuban! One tells how a man went to the forest on the night of Ivan Kupala to look for the missing oxen, and at midnight a flower fell into his shoe. A person who managed to get a fern flower will be happy all his life, he will learn to understand the language of animals, birds and plants, he will discover treasures and treasures hidden in the earth.

There were more than 32 thousand rubles in the bottle. For the beginning of the twentieth century, when a cow cost 8 rubles, the amount is huge! Translated to our days, the cost of royal money is no less. Enough for a Jeep. But the workers did the right thing. By appropriating the treasure, they would have violated Russian law.

Important! If the treasure is found by people at work, during the performance of labor or official duties (for example, by builders or workers during the construction of the same gas pipelines), they do not have the right to appropriate the find.

As for the origin of the treasure, local historians suggest that it was buried around 1919. Treasures in the village have been found before! According to the chief custodian of the funds of the local history museum of Starominskaya Ekaterina Dadyka, merchants and wealthy Cossacks settled in the center of the village. It is clear that in troubled times, people sought to hide money and valuables. But not all Cossacks were able to return for them because of repression and persecution.

Royal treasures

Treasures were hidden by people in times of great upheaval. It is not surprising that most of the finds originate from royal, sometimes very distant times. For example, several treasures were found on the territory of Yeysk, some of them are stored in the city local history museum named after V. Samsonov.

Alexander Doroshenko, a member of the Yeysk Society of Historians and Archivists, shared interesting stories with AiF-South. One of the most valuable exhibits in the museum is a treasure trove of scales from the time of Ivan the Terrible. Scales were called coins minted from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 18th century. The coins were very small and had an oval shape resembling fish scales. There are 359 coins in the Yeysk hoard. In 1945, two Yeysk schoolchildren accidentally found him in a destroyed trench.

Many treasures were not buried by the owners, but hidden in secret places, at home. Until better times, people hid during the civil war and during the years of Stalinist repressions. For example, in one house on Lenin Street, credit cards were lined with a chimney in the attic. The owners discovered the treasure when they installed gas heating and the old pipe had to be broken.

What to do if you find a treasure?

Take pictures of the finds and contact the police or the prosecutor's office, handing over the items for inventory. Get a treasure discovery report from law enforcement officers. In order for the document to become legally valid, at least three witnesses are needed to confirm that it was you who found the treasure. Contact the local museum - its employees will come to the excavation site and take the treasure for examination.

During the repair of the roof in the attic of the house on Pushkin Street, they found a glass quarter filled with silver coins of royal minting. And when the old houses near the Yeysk dairy plant were being demolished, in one of the apartments in the stove fireplace, the builders found a set of silverware.

Instead of pirate maps - archives

Old pirate maps with crosses drawn in the right places are only found in adventure books and cartoons. But there is special literature, archival materials... For serious treasure hunters, the search is not expressed in the desire to get rich. The main thing for them is to restore history, reveal the secret, get to the bottom of the truth. It is the documents for them that are a find, a tip and a hint.

There is something to break your head over. For example, where did the property of the Petersburg Loan Cash Office go? In 1917, the provisional government evacuated a pawnshop of national importance and scale to Yeysk. The cash desk kept deposits in coins made of precious metals, jewelry and collections of antiques. And the “pearl” was the riza of the icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God with 4804 diamonds. Those were real treasures! And he disappeared when he again had to flee from the Reds. No less mysterious is the fate of the "golden convoy" - the valuable property of the Kuban Rada. In 1917, it took as many as 80 wagons to take him out of Ekaterinodar! The convoy seemed to have evaporated ...

According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, if you find a treasure and it has historical value, it should be handed over to the state. At the same time, the owner land plot where the treasure was discovered, and whoever found it, are entitled to receive a reward of 50% of the value of the treasure. The remuneration is distributed between them in equal shares. If you find a valuable treasure alone, get 50% of its value. Remuneration for finds of no value is not paid. But they remain your property.

And researchers sit in libraries, go on field trips, rummage through archives... The search for treasures drags on for years and decades. And they often fail. However, for some it is a matter of life. The sunken ship that prompted the topic for this article was discovered by the Russian Underwater Research Expedition. And success did not come suddenly. According to the head of the expedition, Roman Dunaev, the “address” of the ship’s resting place was prompted precisely by archival materials about the battles during the Great Patriotic War.

They say that if it were possible to find all the treasures that our land and water store, Russia could forget about economic problems for 300 years. But the trade in valuable rarities is the last thing. They are for science and for museums, not for the profit of hucksters.

Vitaly Shamarin, writer, author of the book "Handbook of the treasure hunter" formulated the treasure hunter's code of honor: “Truth first. When searching for a treasure, you should always remember that in your hands there may be exhibits unique to science, which should be presented to specialists as soon as possible.

The truth is the second. Try at least for the first time to refrain from self-restoration of antiques found. This should also be done by experts.

Truth the third. Remember: you are a treasure hunter, not a marauder! Therefore, a wild, barbaric attitude towards nature and the surrounding world is unacceptable.

Classification of treasure hunters

• "Beachers"- the most popular group on our coast. These are the searchers combing the beaches at the end of the day with metal detectors in search of coins, jewelry, watches.
• "Diggers"- researchers of ancient dungeons and modern urban underground communications. Forgotten warehouses, libraries, archives and many interesting things are found in the catacombs.
• "Kurgans" excavate barrows and grave mounds. These are barbarians who practice, for example, such a method - to hire a bulldozer and tear down a hill. Finds come across almost always, but how many disappear! Archaeologists don't like them.
• "Poleviki"- the most professional category. Analyzing some historical fact, studying documents, they determine more or less exact coordinates of the search, and only then they start working. Tasks are set, as a rule, global. For example, the search for gold in the Kuban Rada.
• "gravediggers" they are looking for crypts in abandoned cemeteries, in which far from the poor were buried. According to custom, the tombs were decorated with icons, and if the deceased is a woman or a girl, they did not spare decorations.
• "Trophy"- seekers on the fields of past battles. Weapons are sometimes in excellent condition, explosives, whose shelf life is practically unlimited, are sold on the black market. Helmets, badges, personal belongings of soldiers are taken as souvenirs, but if something worthwhile comes across, they are also sold. Soviet soldiers had shell casings with them, in which notes with the fighter's data were stored. Finding the remains, the “bounty hunters” destroy the graves, depriving professional searchers of the chance to restore the name of the soldier.
• "Divers"- lovers of scuba diving. This category of seekers appeared relatively recently; in Soviet times, underwater archeology simply did not exist. The Black Sea coast is a real treasure!
• "Homemakers". They appear in an already empty house, which is being prepared for major repairs, resettlement or demolition. They tear off door handles, hecks and latches, which in old houses are usually made of bronze. They take out doors, glass, parquet and pipes. But their main goal is to search for hiding places. Usually they were arranged in baseboards, door frames, window sills... An old house may well turn out to be a "gold mine".