On Saturday, hundreds of San Franciscans were on the hunt for treasure. In what’s now become an annual tradition, San Francisco business Witter Coin threw a citywide scavenger hunt where it hid 10 coins with a total value of $50,000.
The company, which has a storefront on Lombard Street, was originally opened in 1960 by Dean Witter, a noted numismatist (aka coin expert). The mantle has since been taken up by Seth Chandler, who built the business into an industry powerhouse with 28 employees. The store serves a wide range of collectors, with some coins selling for as little as $1, and others having sold for upward of $3 million.
This year, the business doubled the prize pool and spent much more time designing challenging clues.
“We spent months ahead of time coming up with the themes, how we would hide the coins, the coins we picked. It’s just fun,” Chandler told SFGATE.
The clues were revealed via Instagram, with artificial intelligence-created figures reading out poems that led seekers to the treasures. The staff pre-tested the riddles by polling up to 25 people, even putting the clues through AI to make sure they weren’t decipherable by algorithms.
“We always try to push it and try to be creative and innovative,” Chandler said. “We’re never going to make everybody happy, but it was very, very overwhelming that people loved the creativity behind the AI. … We just thought it was a fun way to do it, to have a dog spell out the riddle.”
A few of the locations included Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and Corona Heights, where the the biggest prize — a coin worth $25,000 — was hidden. All the coins were created in San Francisco, with nine created at the city’s three major mints (founded in 1854, 1874 and 1937). The final coin was a privately minted $50 gold coin created in 1851 by Augustus Humbert at a temporary mint that predates San Francisco’s original government mints by three years.
As the final clue dropped at 5 p.m., Chandler was hiding out at Corona Heights in disguise awaiting the searchers.
“At 5:15 there was this little kid with blond hair. I’ll never forget. He was focused. He was locked in. He was just looking everywhere,” he said. “And then within a couple minutes, other people started trickling in. And I think it peaked within about five minutes, [there were] maybe like 50 people.” The coin was quickly found by San Franciscan Alexxa Morgan, who had been hunting for another coin at Golden Gate Park and then luckily stopped at a nearby Whole Foods for lunch, putting her within striking distance when the clue was announced.
As Chandler was leaving the site, he saw dozens more walking up the hill. He recounted one story of a grandmother he met who lived an hour outside the city and drove in with her granddaughter, showing her different neighborhoods from her own childhood.
Although obviously a costly expense, Chandler believes the scavenger hunt pays off for his business in the end (and it doesn’t hurt that gold and silver are at all-time highs).
“Is it good for my business? Absolutely, but it’s nothing that has an immediate impact. Our showroom today, we had the normal amount of people. It’s not like a BTS concert is happening. … With little things like this, a scavenger hunt, people just may remember us when they need us.”