A Simple Dig Reveals Hidden Treasure (S2) _ Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo

True power can stand the test of time. It's the spring of 2020 and COVID lockdowns have confined families across the United Kingdom to their homes. One household in England's New Forest area decide they're going to shake off their cabin fever, going to head out to the backyard and do a little bit of gardening. They're weeding, they're digging in the garden, they're just trying to come up with things to pass the time. When suddenly something attracts their attention, it glints in the sunlight. It's small and round and golden. They pick it up, brush the mud off and are shocked to see the image of an angel fighting a dragon on a gold coin. The family can't believe it and so they start sifting through the dirt, digging and sure enough, they find another coin and then another. By sunset, they've dug up 63 gold coins and one silver piece. They call the authorities and within days archaeologists show up and they find six more coins. Most of these coins date to the 1400s, during the reign of Edward IV. One side of the coin shows a ship at sea. The other side shows the archangel Michael defeating a dragon, a powerful symbol drawn from the book of Revelations. But four of the coins are different. Instead of an angel and ship, they feature a Tudor rose. This is the mark of one of England's most influential, flamboyant and controversial kings, Henry VIII. Henry VIII was never supposed to be king. He was the second son, the spare, not the heir. But when his older brother died, the crown fell to him. So in 1509, he ascended to the throne. Henry didn't simply rule England, he transformed it. He broke with the Catholic church and also began rewriting laws to suit his will. In 1526, with Cardinal Wolsey by his side, Henry overhauled the kingdom's currency. He changed the weights and created a new denomination, the gold crown, which was worth five shillings. Henry also added a few other details to his coins. He put his initial H on every coin, kind of like the 16th century version of personal branding, and a total power move. But he didn't hug the spotlight completely, he shared the glory by giving his queens equal billing. His wife's initial was always stamped beside his. Famously, Henry VIII had many wives, and so the initial stamped into the coins changed over time. Some of these rare coins, including the ones with Henry VIII's wife's initials, were recovered from the family's garden, buried and forgotten for almost 500 years. Today, the hoard is worth about $24,000. But why was such a valuable stash buried in the first place? At the time, there was a lot of turmoil for Henry VIII. He was seizing land and wealth from the Catholic church. Monasteries were being dissolved, and treasuries were being emptied. Some historians think the hoard may have been buried by a Catholic clergyman who was hoping to protect the church's wealth from the crown. If that's true, this coin collection may very well have eluded King Henry. When most of us think of power, we think of physical strength. But sometimes that force isn't in the body, it's under the hood. It's 2017, and Hugo Sanchez is picking through a junkyard in Mexico. He restores muscle cars, and so he's looking for a beater with some good bones. It's like a graveyard of metal. You've got your twisted frames, your blown out doors, your rusted fenders, but then he spies something. It's a familiar silhouette that is just covered, unfortunately, by decades of neglect. It's the shell of a 1968 Mustang GT Fastback. The car's a mess. Dents everywhere, rust everywhere, and yet he sees in the silhouette something that he might be able to work with. Without hesitating, Sanchez buys the old car on the spot for $5,000. Sanchez hauls the wreck to his friend, Ralph Garcia Jr., a body shop owner who specializes in customizing old Mustangs. As Garcia begins to inspect the car, he realizes that this is an S-code Mustang GT with a 390 cubic inch V8 engine. This was a beast of a car in its day. So Garcia runs the car's VIN through a database, and what comes back is astonishing to him. It turns out that this Mustang isn't just any old Mustang. This is probably one of the most famous Mustangs in history, because this is the Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in the 1968 film, Bullet. Widely hailed as one of the greatest action films ever made, Bullet became legendary. For its groundbreaking car chase sequence. This was 1968, so no CGI, no green screen, just Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a stripped down Mustang Fastback, tearing through the streets of San Francisco. Well, the film Bullet is what made the Mustang one of the most iconic cars in all of American history. They'd only come on the market four years before, but now everybody wanted a Mustang. Everyone wanted to be as cool as Steve McQueen was behind the wheel. The car may look the part, but to be sure, Sanchez and Garcia reach out to a well-known expert for confirmation. Sanchez and Garcia send photos of the car to Kevin Marty, a renowned Ford historian and an expert on Mustangs. As soon as he sees the photos, he's on the next flight to Mexico. Marty knows every detail about the cars used in Bullet. And the first thing he explains is that there were two of them. One was the hero car used for closeups and regular scenes. The other was the jumper used for stunts. It was reinforced, gutted and totally battered by the shoot. Marty takes a look at the car and he sees the vehicle's reinforced suspension and chassis. He also sees the holes that were put in the car so that the movie lights and the cameras inside the car could be powered. He also notices that underneath that cream-colored paint and those patches of rust, the original paint, that highland green, is still present. It's official. This is the jumper Mustang that made movie magic. But how did it end up in Mexico? After filming wraps on Bullet, the car sold. It changed his hand several times and moves from New Jersey to Kentucky. But eventually, it's just so beat up that it's sold for junk and winds up in this automobile graveyard down in Mexico. Today, the iconic Mustang is turning heads all over again. Sanchez and Garcia have restored the jumper car back to its original 1968 glory. But for now, it's staying in the garage. The Hero car from Bullet sold at auction in 2020 for a staggering $3.74 million. So if the jumper car were to ever hit the market, who knows what lengths collectors would go to acquire it?