1 week Ago By Anthony Maglio
The hunter has become the hunted. At the very beginning of Netflix ‘s Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure , in an aside to the production team, Justin Posey reveals he has hidden a treasure of his own and that he’s sprinkled clues to its whereabouts by way of his elaborate interview setting. At the very end of the docuseries, Posey — a technologist based in Texas, as well as amateur treasure hunter and the star of the three-episode run — shares more detail, direct-to-camera in a self-shot video sent at the 11th hour to Netflix (so the production and post-production staff did not get a “substantial leg up” on the search over viewers).
It was all in the treasure hunter-turned-treasure hider’s grand plan. Posey told The Hollywood Reporter that he made the decision to set up the hidden clues “pretty early” in the process of the Netflix docuseries; Posey is not a producer, he’s just a subject. It was a great way to sell a book , his Beyond the Map’s Edge , if we say so ourselves.
Posey’s book, which includes a poem containing the necessary clues to find his treasure — the Forrest Fenn method — was released on March 27, 2025, the same as Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure . The fair man is a smart man, and Posey says the book is “selling well” so far. “There are some good hints in the series,” Posey said.
“There are much better hints in the book.” He gets paid for exactly one of those. The docuseries and the book do work in tandem to some degree.
Posey says his hints in the series can “help you with the treasure itself,” and they can “certainly help you with the book.” OK, before we head out into the American West, how much is this treasure — a combination of Fenn’s stuff (Posey bought most of the original hidden treasure off of the actual finder) and Posey’s own personal plunder — worth? He won’t — or can’t — directly say. “I’m trying to avoid some of the mistakes that Forrest had made as part of his treasure hunt.
The big advice that I’ve gotten from attorneys is never, never say a value, because that actually gives a basis for a lot of legal issues down the road,” Posey said. “For instance, if I said it’s valued at this amount, and someone took it to an appraiser and that appraiser [assigned] a different amount, then there’s basis for lawsuits.” No one wants that.
Concern over a potential lawsuit (by other seekers) is what caused Jack Stuef, the 32-year-old medical student who found Fenn’s treasure, to rush it to auction — and by proxy, to Posey. “I think it’s fair to say that it’s substantial,” Posey said of his hidden haul. “Just one of those gold bars alone, based on the price of gold today, is pretty close to $100,000 a piece.
” (We’re lacing up our THR -issued hiking boots now.) There are also “a lot of older historical items ” populating the chest (Fenn’s) that Posey says a treasure hunter like himself would dig. “One of them I paid $50,000 for alone — years ago.
I don’t know what the value is today, but quite a few things like that.” There’s also a meteorite. Where does a 42-year-old man who didn’t find Fenn’s treasure get meteorite money? Posey was an early investor (2003) in the very platform that ultimately brought him to the masses: Netflix.
Posey, a software engineer (his day job funded the NFLX buys, which he says “turned out pretty well in the end”), was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He says he comes from a “squarely middle-class family.” That gold bar you see him excitedly unwrap as a kid on Christmas morning like a kid on Christmas morning? A Fugazi.
Right now, “at least a couple hundred people” are out there searching for Posey’s very real gold. Posey says he’s “been getting over 1,000 messages an hour,” and has been forced to shut down his DMs on X and Instagram. (You can still try your luck on Facebook Messenger — sorry, Justin, we’re journalists over here.
) Posey wasn’t prepared for this. “I realized it was going to be on Netflix, but I never expected to hit the Netflix top 10 — especially worldwide,” Posey said. In its first four days, Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure racked up 2.
1 million views, according to Netflix, ranking eighth globally among its English-language TV shows for the week of March 24. It did not chart the following week , so we do not have data beyond March 30. Speaking the charts, keep charting your courses, dreamers.
It is too soon to say if any treasure hunters are “genuinely close of not,” Posey said, but there are “definitely” hunters who “have had some good thoughts.” So, to those hundreds we present our clue, exclusive to THR and straight from Posey: “You don’t need a high-clearance vehicle to find the treasure.” Happy hunting, including to those with lowriders.
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