Couple goes magnet fishing in NYC and finds safe with $100,000
- A couple magnet fishing in Corona Park in Queens pulled up a safe containing $100,000 in bills.
- Water that had penetrated the safe largely destroyed the stack of cash, which was only protected by plastic bags.
- This wasn’t the first safe the couple found while magnet fishing, but it is the first one that still contained cash.
James Kane and Barbie Agostini call magnet fishing a “poor man’s treasure hunt.” They are now a little less poor after dragging $100,000 worth of cash to the surface of a lake in a New York City park. The money was buried in an old safe the couple “fished out” while magnet fishing in Queens.
The couple, who have long been magnet fishing during COVID lockdowns, have discovered safes before. They have even found safes with empty plastic bags that may have once held money. This was the first time they found a safe with plastic bags full of cash.
“There were two stacks of damn hundreds,” Kane said NY1. “Big stacks.”
The find came from the heart of Queens. While fishing in a lake in Corona Park, just minutes from LaGuardia Airport, Kane and Agostini were able to learn a lot about the city’s history. Still, the safe at the other end of a line with a powerful magnet was astonishing. “He showed it to me and when I saw the real dollars and the security bands, I was completely ecstatic,” Agostini said.
Kane tempered the discovery somewhat by saying that the notes were so saturated with water that they were “pretty much destroyed.”
Knowing they had found a valuable treasure, the pair wanted to make sure it was theirs. Kane and Agostini called the New York Police Department, and officers headed to the site. Although everyone agreed the safe had probably been stolen at some point, there was no way to determine the rightful owners, and the magnet fishermen were allowed to keep the find. “I guess the finder-keeper rule worked for us,” Kane said.
The two spend most of their time magnet fishing in Queens and the surrounding boroughs. They have already found a World War II hand grenade in Brooklyn and more than a handful of weapons in Flushing Meadows, including several 19th Century finds.
Magnet fishing is a unique way for treasure hunters to explore bodies of water. By using ropes to lower high-powered magnets into the depths of lakes, ponds, rivers or other bodies of water, magnet fishermen can drop the line to the bottom and see what metal objects they can catch.
Enthusiastic magnet fishermen say the hobby offers a new approach to treasure hunting that is completely different from scanning the earth’s surface with a metal detector and digging into the ground to bring a find to the surface.
“How I learned,” wrote Ben Demchak for Popular mechanics“You only need a few essential pieces of equipment, including a magnet, rope, gloves, a carabiner and a storage container.”
Some starter kits cost as little as $20 on Amazon or specialty magnet fishing websites. “Over time, you learn the fascinating field of magnets – some of the strongest neodymium magnets can pull 2,000-pound objects out of the water,” Demchak wrote. “And you can do it almost anywhere – I’ve met enthusiastic magnet fishermen in the US and Europe.”
And just like Kane and Agostini, Demchak has landed a lot of weapons – and each of them, he says, holds a mystery.
“You don’t have to be a professional archaeologist or historian, but a little luck and a little Indiana Jones-like spirit of discovery helps,” Demchak said. “You never know what you’ll find when you throw your magnet into the murky waters down there.”
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, equipment, infrastructure and more for various publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews include speaking with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
