Where to Hide Stash for Access in 20-40 Years?

[TromboneAl]

In 1980 San Francisco, you're about to travel forward in time twenty to forty years. You can't take anything with you.

You stuff a stainless-steel flask or other small durable container (ideas?) full of cash, diamonds, stock certificates, and you hide it. You want it to be easily accessed when you arrive in the future.

Where do you hide it?

My current thinking:

Tucked up into the underside of a bridge (e.g. Golden Gate) where no one is likely to find it.

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Chiseled into the upper parts of a tree in Golden Gate park.

Placed inside a public statue (make a trap door?).

Thanks.
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[brewer12345]

I would bury it in a remote part of a national park or similar.

 

[NW-Bound]

The Golden Gate Bridge gets repainted often, and the painters might find the stash. Trees get chopped down or die. Statues may get replaced.

I think I would find a remote corner in a national forest and bury the loot.

 

[FIREd]

Since the bridge has been retrofitted for earthquakes and repainted several times since 1980, I think the flask would have been discovered.


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[TromboneAl]

My plan is that she (it's a woman) will have a nice big cache buried in a national forest, but she also has a small cache somewhere easily accessible.

She arrives naked and unconscious, and is put in a hospital. She escapes in the night, stealing some clothes that have $100 in a pocket (year 2020).

She takes a cab to the mini-cache location, and gets enough dough to get lodging and fake IDs. Then she can rent a car, buy a shovel, and go to her main cache.

OTOH, I might want to have her mini-cache gone (park paved over, statue replaced, etc), so she'll have to struggle more.

 

[ArkTinkerer]

Mini cache in a columbarium of a large Catholic church?

 

[Keim]

My suggestion is probably to hum drum. Why not put it in a bank deposit box and let it sit?


Fun suggestions:
I would attempt to locate it near or in a large new public amenity that is going up currently-so it is likely to still be there in 40 years.
Building wall
Base of statue

 

[NW-Bound]

Even if hiding the cache in a forest, I would divide it and bury in at least 2 locations. Diversification is the rule.

My suggestion is probably to hum drum. Why not put it in a bank deposit box and let it sit?

If the account is inactive for some time, most likely shorter than the desired 20-40 years, the bank will turn the content over to the state. That likely creates some problem for our time traveling heroine when she claims it. Where has she been? Why has she not filed tax returns all these years?

 

[TromboneAl]

If the account is inactive for some time, most likely shorter than the desired 20-40 years, the bank will turn the contents over to the state.

Plus, she has no form of identification.

 

[Big_Hitter]

hide it somewhere no one goes very often, like an old cemetary

 

[JoeWras]

This is an interesting problem!

Forget the bridge. The painters will get the loot. Bridges have constant maintenance.

Burying it in a hole in a park sounds good, but man there are a lot of people geocaching and looking with metal detectors. That scares me a bit too.

The cemetery idea has promise.

A "trap door" in something public is also a nice idea, but your protagonist better be expert at doing something like that. That's not a trivial operation.

 

[Travelwanted]

How about in an urn in a mortuary? I think that'd be pretty safe.

 

[Walt34]

Even if hiding the cache in a forest, I would divide it and bury in at least 2 locations. Diversification is the rule.

My thought too, with both caches. Divided up into three would be better. JoeWras is right about the metal detectors too, and that situation is not going to get better.

I like the cemetery idea. But divided into different cemeteries, even those get moved sometimes.

Bridges get too much maintenance for that idea to work - someone would find it for sure. Perhaps even for the statue too. One nearby here has been in place for 50+ years and they're making noises about moving it. Murphy's Law, you know....

Cemetery or National Park is best, I lean in favor of the cemetery.

 

[splitwdw]

Does she know the hospital in advance? Hide it in the basement of the hospital. To put a twist in the story, the hospital has been remodeled and parts of the old hospital have been sealed off, and then she wanders the basement trying to reorient herself hoping that her cache is still there.......and then she cuts through a fake wall...... and then discovers the old hallway that leads to the old mortuary..........and then finds her cache hidden in a floor drain and finds a..............body.
Al, Whose body?

 

[FIREd]

I like the cemetery idea.

+1. In San Francisco, it may be the only thing that could remain undisturbed for 40 years.

I also thought of other buildings like the Coit tower and City Hall that have not changed much in a long time. But the potential for the stash to be discovered during a remodel is pretty high.

 

[NW-Bound]

I am reminded of the Clint Eastwood movie "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot", where robbers hid the loot in a one-room schoolhouse. When they came back, they saw the old schoolhouse gone, and replaced by a modern building.

 

[prudent_one]

There would have to be some large wilderness areas accessible not that far away. I would use a Ziploc bag, put in the smallest of three nested sealed plastic containers (wax around the lip) to avoid metal detectors and protect against moisture and insects. Looking at a map, perhaps Mt. Diablo state park - steep terrain that would discourage casual hikers, no chance of construction taking place. Find a place that's inconvenient to get to because it's steep, way off any documented trails, bury it.

 

[folivier]

I would say for her to buy a plot in a mausoleum and stash it behind the cover plate.

 

[JoeWras]

There would have to be some large wilderness areas accessible not that far away. I would use a Ziploc bag, put in the smallest of three nested sealed plastic containers (wax around the lip) to avoid metal detectors and protect against moisture and insects. Looking at a map, perhaps Mt. Diablo state park - steep terrain that would discourage casual hikers, no chance of construction taking place. Find a place that's inconvenient to get to because it's steep, way off any documented trails, bury it.

I have had some keys buried in my back yard for nearly 20 years now. I used a glass container with a plastic lid, and it is holding up well.

Not saying the flexible bags are a bad idea, but just saying that in addition glass is also possible.

Got to keep away the coins though...

 

[splitwdw]

I would say for her to buy a plot in a mausoleum and stash it behind the cover plate.

Oh, good idea. Like the cemetery idea too.............where she also finds a body........with her face! Just got done watching a murder mystery and there's always a body or two.

 

[mpeirce]

> full of cash, diamonds, stock certificates

Depending on the time period cash might be an issue. Printed money has been evolving pretty quickly and using large denomination old bills might draw attention.

Also, in 40 years, will paper money even be allowed? Maybe the character has to sell the cash to a collector for "credits".

 

[TromboneAl]

Yes, the cemetery idea is excellent.

As for easy access, she could just dig down a foot or so right along the front of the granite grave markers.

>Depending on the time period cash might be an issue. Printed money has been evolving pretty quickly and using large denomination old bills might draw attention.

I've thought about that, but I considered that if someone handed me a twenty minted in 1980, I wouldn't even notice. Here's a twenty from 1928:

This is my pseudo-code version of this portion of the scene. Maybe I'll have this fail, and have her go to her backup cache in the cemetery.

In cab, asks to be taken to Gemco, JJ Newberry.
Cabbie: ?
A discount store that sells sneakers. Near GG Park?
At four AM?
Yes.
Uses map app on dashboard. Viv is fascinated.
V Waits for store to open.
Asks for basketball sneakers. Buys cheap high-tops, cheap knife.
Goes to cypress tree,
Much bigger than it was.
checks around, no one coming.
Climbs it.
Comes to cache location.
It’s not there.
Had chiseled away the bark and inserted her SS flask with money and diamonds.
It had to be here. She had the location correct.
Could it … ?
Stabs tree into location, knife hits something.
Ah, the bark has grown over it.
Starts digging with the knife. Not going to work
“Hey, you can’t climb that tree!”
Shoot, wasn’t watching for people.

 

[TromboneAl]

I was surprised that we've had ziplocs since the sixties:

“It seems hard to believe it now, but people did not know how to open the bag,” Steven Ausnit, developer of the original Ziploc, recently told an audience at Marquette University. He recalled that sometime around the early 1960s, his company persuaded Columbia Records to try a plastic sleeve with the zipper on top for albums. “At the final meeting, we were all set to go. The guy called in his assistant, handed her the sealed bag and said, ‘Open it.’ I thought to myself, Lady, please do the right thing! The more she looked at it, the more my heart sank. And then she tore the zipper right off the bag.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/who-made-that-ziploc-bag.html

 

[ArkTinkerer]

The reasoning behind the columbarium in a church is that the stash can be put in an urn that no one will disturb. Churches are often open 24hours. Depending on location it is usually easy to access the urn.

 

[TromboneAl]

The reasoning behind the columbarium in a church is that the stash can be put in an urn that no one will disturb. Churches are often open 24hours. Depending on location it is usually easy to access the urn.

Yes, that's even better. I didn't know what a columbarium was, so I missed it first time through.

I'm amazed at the good ideas I get here.

Thanks.