In May 2025, news spread on VKontakte: in Tomsk, a teenager allegedly found a treasure and took it to a pawnshop, but there they paid him much less than the real value of the find. We have verified the authenticity of such messages.
Viral posts about the found treasure differ slightly from each other. For example, in the public “Latest news“(3 million views at the time of writing this analysis), the story is presented as follows: “A Tomsk schoolboy accidentally donated a fortune to a pawnshop. While walking through the forest, a student from Tomsk found a dilapidated box with rare coins of Tsarist Russia. Together with a friend, he decided to quickly exchange them for money and received 100,000 rubles from a pawnshop. When the parents saw photographs of the find, it became clear that the coins were worth much more. But when the teenager returned to get them, it turned out that the pawnshop had already closed forever.” Some records specify that the coins found either in the forest ravine, or in ditch, were gold and each of them supposedly cost hundreds of thousands of rubles. Somewhere is given and the teen's alleged comment: "I thought we just found nice coins." Such posts appeared in public pages “Information field"(373,000 views), "Diggers Anonymous Club. Metal detecting"(268,000), "How is this possible?"(201,000), "Telegram" (twice: 132,000 And 80,000) etc. All of them contain two photographs of coins with the image of Nicholas II.
To begin with, “Verified” tried to determine the original source of this news - it turned out to be not a note in the Tomsk media or a post on a schoolchild’s social networks. The earliest post with a message about how a teenager found coins appeared on May 3 at 21:37 Moscow time in the public “Obi"(1.8 million views) on VKontakte. In our analysis, this community with 690,000 subscribers has already been mentioned as the primary source of misinformation about similar finds that allegedly enriched residents of different regions of Russia. It was there that they first wrote about mushroom picker from Kamchatka, who found a jug with gold coins from the 18th century in the forest, about teenager from Krasnodar, who discovered thousand-year-old shells with large black pearls on the beach, and about resident Taganrog, who bought a rare car in the USA for $9,000 and after repairs costing $6,000, sold this car for $80,000.
The next step was to check the pictures provided in the posts mentioned above. It turned out that the first photo was taken in Moscow at the beginning of July 2019. Then Baza edition wrotethat a treasure was found at a construction site in the city center - and not by workers, but by an archaeologist Konstantin Kretinin, who inspects construction sites. According to press release capital city hall, a set of yellow metal coins from the time of Nicholas II was in a tin box, which was only partially preserved. “It’s still difficult to say how many of them exactly - most likely, about 60 pieces (the coins were sintered, so archaeologists were unable to establish their exact number on the spot. - Ed.) The denomination is also visible - 5 and 10 rubles. The money dates back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The owner probably hid them in the basement during the Revolution or Civil War. This treasure was one of the largest found in Moscow over the past few years,” said the head of the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage, Alexey Emelyanov. According to preliminary estimates specialists, the value of the treasure could make up more than 1 million rubles. (on average approximately 10,000 - 30,000 rubles each. per coin).
Later, Ekaterina Svyatitskaya, head of the sector of the Archeology department of the Museum of Moscow stated “RIA Novosti” that the coins will be sent to a special institution for the formation of the State Fund of Precious Metals (Gokhran) under the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. “When such a treasure is found, the first thing archaeologists do is call the police, because it is a precious metal. If we find gold, we cannot simply take it and transfer it to some museum, since [this] involves many procedures: the treasure is sent to Gokhran, and there, in order for the museum to take it for storage, it must have a special fund for storing precious metals,” explained Svyatitskaya.
The second photo was taken a few months later. At the end of October 2019, Kursk Internet Television reported, that an expedition from the Research Institute of Archeology of South-East Rus' at Kursk State University discovered a treasure from the late 19th - early 20th centuries during excavations in the city center. “The treasure consists of 119 gold coins. They were hidden not far from the foundation of a brick house built in the 19th century,” the city administration said. It was clarified that this was the second such find by Kursk archaeologists in four years; the last time the treasure consisted of silver coins of the 17th century. Local media reportedthat after the completion of the field phase of excavations and all the necessary scientific research, the gold coins, along with other finds, will be transferred to the State Museum Fund.
Thus, the news about how a schoolboy from Tomsk found ancient items, and then was deceived by a pawnshop employee, represents another falsification of the Ob public page on VKontakte. At the same time, in description this community does not clearly indicate that they publish fictitious news: “Author's entertainment blog with original content and unique style, founded more than 15 years ago.” At the time of publication of this analysis, only one Of the four posts by “Obi”, which had already been refuted by “Verified”, I received a special warning from the platform about possible misinformation.
Cover photo: Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage / 46TV
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