First year of medallion hunt is a success.
For Matt Koskie and Steven Sanfter, the Payne-Arcade Harvest Festival medallion was their tenth medallion find this summer.
The two treasure hunters found the medallion in Swede Hollow Park last Sunday, on Sept. 17.
The first-ever Harvest Festival medallion hunt began on Sept. 9 with clues posted each day on the East Side St. Paul Lions Club website and Facebook page.
Koskie and Sanfter are semi-professional treasure hunters, part of a treasure hunting fraternity called the Cooler Crew, which formed out of the St. Paul Winter Carnival medallion hunt.
They register and hunt for medallions in communities all across Minnesota.
“We’re on quite the tear,” Koskie of the duo’s successful medallion-hunting season.
The hunt
Koskie and Sanfter have been hunting together for four years, after meeting each other during the Winter Carnival hunt in 2013.
They’re a complementary pair, they said — Koskie enjoys deciphering clues while Sanfter is better at actually finding the medallions out in the parks.
Koskie said his favorite part is the puzzle. He describes the hunt as a rush. “You could assume it’s kind of like a drug, I get kind of obsessed with it sometimes,” he said.
“The thing I enjoy most is...the creativity of the hiding,” Sanfter said.
They guys describe their hunting process as happening in two phases. The first phase is deciphering the clues to figure out what park the medallion is hidden in.
When it comes to deciphering, Koskie said, “Try to leave assumptions at the door.”
“It’s really important that you don’t see meaning where there is none and to pick and choose what’s meaningful to solving the clues, and that’s something that becomes developed over time,” he added.
The second phase involves actually searching in the park.
“As you look around your heart starts pounding faster,” Sanfter said.
But sometimes they aren’t always successful. They may have the right park, but be off on the location in the park.
“What sucks is sometimes we’ll look everywhere in a park and not find it and at that point you know you walked right by it,” Sanfter said.
“That’s the worst,” Koskie added.
To create a bit of competition between the two hunters, Koskie said, they split their prize money 60-40, meaning whoever touches the medallion first gets the 60 percent cut. Or, in a situation like the Harvest Festival where the finders get to keep the medallion, whoever touches it first, keeps it.
Sanfter added that he brings his 4-year-old son Skylar on hunts too. Sanfter said if he finds a medallion, he’ll rehide it to let his son have the fun of “finding” the medallion.
“He gets a kick out of it,” Sanfter said.
The art of clue-writing
The clue writer for the medallion hunt, Ed Brodie, is also a part of the Cooler Crew treasure hunting fraternity. Brodie has been hunting since 1991.
He said he had been pushing Harvest Festival organizers to do a medallion hunt for many years, but it required a gambling license, which the Arcade-Phalen American Legion provided this year.
He explained there’s an art to writing the clues and finding a balancing in how difficult they are.
“Sometimes these new hunts can die after the first year,” Brodie said, explaining that you don’t want people finding the medallion too early.
In this case, the Harvest Festival medallion hunt started Sept. 9, a Saturday, and was planned to end Sept. 19, a Tuesday. He said usually you want people to find it on the weekend, a few days before the last clue is scheduled to be released.
When he writes the clues, the first few typically don’t give much away, he said, in order to build up excitement. During the weekdays, when most people are working or have other things going on, he tries not to give away too much. He said he wants everyone to have a fair chance to look for it, so he gives out the most revealing clues on the weekends when more people have time to search.
Why Swede Hollow?
How did the medallion end up in Swede Hollow Park?
“I grew up playing down there,” Brodie said. A lot of his family has lived near the Hollow for years. Brodie is also a sculptor whose artwork is often featured in Art in the Hollow. He lives in Maplewood.
“I knew the history very well,” Brodie said, explaining that many of his clues incorporated Swede Hollow and East Side history.
Brodie designed the medallion, using the same design found on this year’s Harvest Festival buttons. He was a “stickler” about letting whoever found the medallion keep it as a little keepsake.
Because the finders got to keep the medallion, Brodie added a fun congratulatory message on the back of the medallion.
“They’re the only ones allowed to see it,” he said.
About 60 to 70 people participated in the new medallion hunt.
Brodie said with this successful first year, organizers are already planning next year’s hunt. They’re also hoping to double the prize, from $250 to $500.
Marjorie Otto can be reached at 651-748-7816 or at eastside@lillienews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @EastSideM_Otto
Copyright 2017 Lillie Suburban Newspapers.