There are spoilers here for the Netflix Documentary Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure
I enjoy a good Netflix documentary as long as it’s not too traumatizing and my threshold for that is high. Some of my recent favorites have been The Twister: Caught in the Storm, American Murder: Gabby Petito, American Murder: The Family Next Door and Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lakpa Sherpa. Over the weekend I binged the three part series Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure. It’s the true story of an octagenarian who buried over a million dollars in treasure in 2010 somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Clues to the location were given in a cryptic poem within Fenn’s memoir. Gold & Greed profiles the colorful cast of treasure hunters, Fenn and Fenn’s family. Fenn passed away in September 2020, a few months after his treasure was found. At least three people are known to have died while searching. Fenn’s family was stalked and harassed by people desperate for the money, even after his death. It’s an unbelievable tale of greed and adventure, with the biggest twist coming at the end. I’ll let Outside Magazine tell that part and again there are huge spoilers. If you like to learn more about this series, Netflix has a good explainer and the trailer is below.
The Forrest Fenn treasure hunt is back on, and if you want to find the loot, you’re going to have to binge-watch Netflix.
That’s the big takeaway from Netflix’s three-part docuseries Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure, which went live on Thursday, March 27. The series chronicles the decade-long hunt to find the chest that Fenn buried in the western United States—and the lives of the people who became swept up in the frenzy to find it. Over the three 50-minute episodes, the series dives into the good, the bad, and the ugly moments of the Fenn hunt, including the five deaths that occurred during it.
(Spoilers ahead) But the series’ headline-grabbing moment comes in Gold & Greed’s final few minutes. One of the treasure hunters profiled in the series, a software engineer named Justin Posey, reveals that he purchased some of the 476 items from the Fenn treasure after it went up for auction in 2022. And now, he’s put the goodies—along with additional gold, rubies, and even a meteorite—in a chest and buried it somewhere out there. To find the trove, you must decipher clues that are hidden in the three-part series.
“I managed to sneak in some hints during the filming of this series—no one knows what the hints are besides me, not even the producers,” Posey says in the series’ final scene. “So it’s worth your time to watch and listen closely.”
To be honest, the revelation helps explain some of Posey’s curious quirks throughout the docuseries. He drives a truck that’s wrapped in a topographic map, he sits for interviews in front of computer screens showing mountains, creeks, and lakes, and he lives in a house filled with strange artifacts from his own collection.
“Most of my family and friends would categorize me as eccentric,” Posey says in episode one.
So yeah, anyone who wants to find Fenn’s—er Posey’s—treasure is going to have to watch Gold & Greed again and again, until they have committed the entire program to memory.
I suppose that’s one way to market a documentary film.
There’s more on Outside’s site, including background and an interview with director Jared McGilliard. The series is very entertaining, it’s well edited and is worth watching. These people seeking the treasure essentially did so in vain, with several losing relationships, loved ones, and years of their lives. It all seemed quite bleak and pointless to me, although there were positives, like getting out into nature and having a quest, however futile. The man who found the treasure wisely did it without drawing much attention to himself. He would have remained anonymous if it wasn’t for Fenn’s family, who revealed his identity after Fenn’s death to try to appease the community of treasure hunters. Many speculated that the whole thing was a hoax. There was such a human cost to Fenn’s family and for the people who sought his treasure. Fenn spoke to the press and communicated directly with the treasure hunters in the ten years before his loot was found. He dropped both real and misleading hints and remained cagey, defiant and stubborn, even as multiple people died looking.
Justin Posey, mentioned in the quoted text above, is a software developer who did not find the treasure but was essentially the runner up. The fact that decided to create his own treasure hunt and to use his interviews in this show to give clues belies the whole point of the docuseries. It’s about to be another clusterf-k of people putting their lives and sanity at risk trying to find the booty. The producers claim that they have no idea where Posey’s treasure is hidden, but it’s hard to believe that they didn’t work with him somewhat. If he was working clues into his interviews, did he have final say in the edits? It’s possible that he only included context clues like background items and photos. As much as I found the ending frustrating, I’m thinking and talking about it, much like Fenn intended with his original stunt.
photos courtesy of Netflix