A Couple Went Magnet Fishing in NYC—and Pulled a Safe Stuffed With $100K in Cash
A couple magnet fishing in Queens’ Corona Park hauled up a safe loaded with $100,000 in bills.
Water seeping into the safe largely destroyed the stacks of cash protected only by plastic bags.
This wasn’t the first safe the pair has found while magnet fishing, but it is the first one with cash still inside.
James Kane and Barbie Agostini call magnet fishing a “poor man’s treasure hunting.” They’re slightly less poor now, after hauling what could be $100,000 in cash to the surface of a lake in a New York City park. That cash was entombed in an old safe the couple ‘hooked’ while magnet fishing in Queens.
The couple, who have been magnet fishing since getting bored during the COVID lockdowns, have discovered safes before. They’ve even found safes with empty plastic bags that could have once held money. This was the first time they found a safe with plastic bags full of cash.
“It was two stacks of freaking hundreds,” Kane told NY1. “Big stacks.”
The find came from the heart of Queens. Fishing in a lake in Corona Park, just minutes from LaGuardia Airport, Kane and Agostini had plenty of urban history to mine. Still, the safe on the other end of a line with a strong magnet was astonishing. “He showed me and once I saw the actual dollars and the security ribbons I lost it,” Agostini said.
Tempering the find a bit, Kane said the bills were so sopped with water they were “pretty much destroyed.”
Knowing they’d located a treasure worth having, the pair wanted to make sure it remained theirs. Kane and Agostini called the New York Police Department, and officers responded to the location. While all agreed the safe was likely stolen at some point, there was no way to identify the rightful owners, and the magnet fishers were allowed to keep the discovery. “I guess the finders-keepers rule worked for us,” Kane said.
The two spend most of their time magnet fishing in Queens and the surrounding boroughs. They’ve already found a World War II-era hand grenade in Brooklyn and more than a handful of guns in Flushing Meadows, including multiple 19th century finds.
Magnet fishing offers a unique way for treasure hunters to explore bodies of water. By using ropes to lower high-powered magnets into the depths of lakes, ponds, rivers, or other bodies of water, magnet fishers can drop the line to the bottom and see what metal items they can snag.
Avid magnet fishers say the hobby provides a fresh approach to treasure hunting, something far different than using a metal detector to sweep the surface of the Earth and digging into the ground to pull up a find.
“As I learned,” Ben Demchak wrote for Popular Mechanics, “you only need a few important pieces of gear, including a magnet, rope, gloves, carabiner, and storage container.”
Some starter kits cost as little as $20 on Amazon or from dedicated magnet fishing websites. “As you progress there’s the fascinating field of magnets to learn—some of the most powerful neodymium styles can pull 2,000-pound objects out of the water,” Demchak wrote. “And you can do it almost anywhere—I’ve met enthusiastic magnet fishers across the U.S. and Europe.”
And just like Kane and Agostini, Demchak has reeled in plenty of guns—each of which, he said, offers up a mystery.
“You don’t need to be a professional archeologist or historian, but it helps to have a little bit of luck and some of Indiana Jones’ taste for discovery,” Demchak said. “You never know what you’re going to find when you toss your magnet into the murky waters below.”
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