Two hikers were strolling in the foothills of the Krkonose Mountains in the Czech Republic in early February when they noticed something shiny peeking out of a stone wall. They pulled out what turned out to be an aluminum can, looked inside and found a small fortune.
Inside was a treasure trove of 598 gold coins, neatly organized into columns and wrapped in black fabric, said Miroslav Novak, the head of the archaeological department of the Museum of Eastern Bohemia, which later took possession of the stash.
A few feet away, the hikers unearthed a second cache: a metal box containing gold items, including 16 snuffboxes, 10 bracelets, a comb, a chain with a small key and a powder compact.
The discovery of the treasure, worth as much as $680,000, has set off a search among historians and amateur sleuths to figure out who might have hidden the riches.
“What is exceptional in this case is the volume,” Dr. Novak said.
He estimated that the gold coins were worth around 7.5 million Czech Koruna, or about $340,000. The other items, if they are solid gold and not merely gold plated, could be worth another $340,000, he said.
But what was really intriguing, he said, was how recently the items were buried.
While archaeological discoveries are fairly common in the region, with many dating back to the Bronze Age or medieval times, the newest coin in this collection was from 1921, indicating that the treasure had been hidden within about the past century.
That relative recency has offered a tantalizing lead to researchers, who think they may be able to track down the owner of the treasure through archival research and solve the mystery of why it was hidden.
“It’s possible that someone might come across some information, perhaps in the newspapers of the time, that someone robbed a jewelry store or something like that, and suddenly it might lead us to a clue,” Dr. Novak said.
He said he had already received a steady stream of suggestions — and a few conspiracy theories — about who the owner might be.
Was it a soldier returning from a war? A merchant fleeing the area during conflict? Or perhaps the wealthy heiress of a nearby family?
The coins offer perhaps the best — yet most confounding — clues.
None of the money circulated in the area where it was discovered. Roughly half the coins are from Western European countries, including France and Belgium. The rest are from regions around the world, including the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Tunisia and other parts of Africa.
The Balkan coins have holes drilled in them, indicating that they were most likely used to adorn the headbands or necklaces that were part of folk costumes or wedding attire, Dr. Novak said.
Online, some suggested the gold could have been the collection of a guard at a prisoner-of-war camp, while others were sure it was hidden by a local dentist.
Experts at the museum and other historians have looked to the region’s tumultuous history for explanations. Bohemia, what is today western Czech Republic, witnessed huge waves of migration and forced expulsions after 1938.
Before World War II, about 120,000 Jewish people lived in Bohemia and Moravia, now eastern Czech Republic, which were occupied by Germany in 1938, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. About 26,000 Jews fled the area before 1941, and around 82,000 were later deported.
Other groups also fled during Germany’s occupation, said Martin Vesely, an associate professor of history at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in the Czech Republic. About 200,000 people relocated, including many Czechs, he said.
After the war, in 1945, around three million Germans, seen as culpable for the war and Nazi crimes, fled or were deported from the area.
“Perhaps the person ended up in a concentration camp, or maybe it was a German who simply couldn’t return to retrieve it,” Dr. Novak said.
At the end of the war, the territory that is now the Czech Republic absorbed around 1.7 million refugees from across Europe, Dr. Vesely said, including people from Belgium, Estonia, France, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Spain and the Balkans. Many arrived carrying all of their possessions.
“The problem is that there are a huge number of possibilities,” Dr. Vesely said. “Central Europe was swept through by a huge number of people in various directions back and forth during those years, so anything could have happened.”
The personal objects found with the coins, including the snuff boxes and compact, may be key to resolving the mystery. The stash contained a mix of items used by both men and women, and given how many items were included, may have been buried by a group rather than a single person, Dr. Vesely said.
The museum has begun to scour the items for engravings or other markings, but so far they have yielded few hints. Two of the snuff boxes, however, have yet to be opened.
“We’ll see if the last two help us in any way,” Dr. Novak said.
