Big day, Rick.
I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time.
I can’t but agree, Gary.

Rick Lina, metal detection expert Gary Drayton, and archaeologist Lear Nan anxiously arrive on Lot 5, located on the western side of Oak Island.

Larry, this must be exciting for you.
Yes. It just bothered me to not have access to it… to have that part of the story missing.
And we’ll just add to Robert’s legacy.
Mhm. That’s the whole point of this — continuing the work that he did for many, many, many years.

The lot is a mystery.
Let’s see what we can find.

Okay.
When we take down the sign, we realize that it is indeed our responsibility at this point to carry on Robert’s work.

This is in the past now, mate.
To the future.
Let’s get started.

Am I ecstatic, over the moon to be able to go dig on a lot that has eluded us?
The opportunity for answers — 100%.
You could equate it to being given the keys to the family car when you’re 15 or 16.

I didn’t think this day would ever happen.
It’s very, very cool.

All right, let’s see what we’ve got waiting for us here.
Right — see what this one sounds like.

Oh, I like the sound of that.
See how wide it is? But that’s the center of it.
It’s rocky, man.
Let’s see if that did anything.
See if I can pinpoint it.

Survey marker.
Yep. That’s a survey marker, mate.
Survey says… don’t dig on top of it.

Okay. So, the next targets are down here, mate.
And we go in further into Lot 5.
Okie do.

Robert Young did exhaustive work on his property.
He worked intimately with Fred Nolan, but he did not have the sophisticated equipment that Gary has.
So, could something of immense value still be hiding on Lot 5?
Absolutely.

This is better, mate.
We’re getting more into Lot 5.
Now we stand a chance of finding something good.

Okay, I’m going to hold you to it.
Okay.

Oh, that sounds better.
It does, doesn’t it?

Just there.
Well, it’s nothing rock.
It’s just too rough land to be farmland, isn’t it?

See if you moved it.
Yep. Yep. I think you moved it.

Oh, look at that. Look at the patina on that.
Oh my god, my hands are shaking, mate.
Turn it over.

That’s a cut coin by the look of it.
Yeah, that’s what they did back in the day — they cut them in half or cut little bits off for change.
That’s why they cut coins, especially hammered coins in half.

This is freaking gorgeous, mate.
And that ain’t no milled coin, mate.
No.

To me, mate, this looks like a hammered coin.
Obviously it’s not a milled coin — it’s too thin.

And if it is hammered, mate, it goes way back.
That is old.

Dating back to the first millennium BC, hammered coinage was the first known method for creating metal currency.
By placing a small blank piece of metal between two patterned surfaces known as dies, repeated hammering would create the stamp or assigned value on either side of the coin.

It’s bloody fantastic, mate.

But what makes this find potentially important for the team is that the process was replaced by machines in Europe during the 15th century.
This means that it could be more than 500 years old.

This is the type of find you would pull up in Europe somewhere.
And that’s what makes this so special.
That’s treasure, mate.

That is special.
We have got to bag this.
This could be very, very important.

Wow. That’s a little mini piece of art.
Get that sealed.
You know where that’s going, mate — that bona fide top-pocket find.

How about getting it right back to the lab and finding out what it is?

” I’m good with that.

See what the techie machines tell us.”

Following their discovery on Lot 5…

Just the people we want to see.

Rick and Gary arrive at the interpretive center
to have it analyzed by archaeologist Laird Niven
and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan.

Sometimes when we’re in here
and we’re just standing
and Gary and Jack or Gary and Peter come in, right,
and what do we always say?
Oh, they’re smiling.
That’s a good sign.
That’s a very good sign.
Especially about this item, Gary.

Well, we just come from Lot Five, mate.
And pulled up a nice top-pocket find, mate.
Don’t worry, it’s still in the bag.
Check that out, mate.
See what you think of that.

I’ve got the glasses.
Oh, it’s thin.
Yeah, it looked like a button at first, but it’s not.
Nope.

Oh, don’t keep me in suspenders, mate.
What do you think?

It’s a cut coin.
That’s what I thought as well.

The patina’s great.
Yeah, we couldn’t tell whether it looked like copper or silver.

Yeah.
I mean, I’ve seen a lot of coins.
I’ve actually found hammered coins in England
and obviously I’ve found a lot of Spanish…

I just don’t know what I’m looking at.

Well, we can XRF it.
That will tell us for sure what this metal is.

Yeah, that’s what we’re hoping you can do, mate.

All right, Emma.

To gain more information on the possible origin of the coin,
Emma will use the X-ray fluorescent spectrometer —
the XRF device —
which can identify the types of elements and metals
that make up its composition.

Right now, I’m just going through each peak
and identifying all those elements.

It’s preserved like it’s silver
and it looks like it’s copper.

Well, we will soon find out.
All right.
It looks mainly copper… some tin… some iron.
That little tiny bump right there is arsenic.

So is it arsenical bronze?

Yeah, it would be like an arsenical bronze.

Wow.
So it’s old.

Yeah.
Kind of like 1500s, and kind of trickled out.
By 1700s, you wouldn’t have seen it whatsoever.
So it is old.

Yeah.

We don’t see arsenic bronze past a certain date.
And coins of that size are usually
16th-century — pre-those dates.

Yeah.
Yeah.

You remember the other arsenical copper little guy?

The arsenical bronze that was found on Lot 7.
And this is a couple of lots over — Lot 5.
Not too far from each other.

Two months ago, Gary and Jack Begley discovered a bonder token
on nearby Lot 7,
which also contained arsenical bronze
and was determined by coin expert Sandy Campbell
to potentially predate the 16th century.

It’s 500 years old at least.

Is it possible that the team has just unearthed
another critical puzzle piece
that could help determine
the origin of the Oak Island mystery?

You can eliminate for the most part English and Spanish.

Yeah. Right.
I don’t think it’s English or Spanish.

So that takes it into…
Yeah…
some pretty interesting territory.

We have fingerprints though
that certainly suggest 1500s.

Mhm.
So it’s starting to craft — or weave —
some sort of texture toward a story component, right?

Yeah.
I like it when we can add artifacts to the thing
and really strengthen our argument
that there was early activity here.

Arsenical bronze dating from as early as 1500.
That’s an aha moment.
That’s quite remarkable.

What does it mean?
You know, it’s like I’m up here with:
“Wow. Fantastic. 1500. Unbelievable,” right?
Little pieces of something telling us that.

And then I’m down here like:
“But what does it mean?”

It’s all good news.

Lot 5 and Lot 7
are now turning up some really esoteric metals,
and we need to find out why.

Mhm.

So there’s a lot of work to do,
but you and I won’t do it in here, right?
So I think we should go back out,
find more.

Okay, mate.
All right.Good luck, guys.

Thanks.
Cheers.

I got high hopes for today.
There is a sea of flags.

How many… how many are in there?

Uh… forty-two flags, mate.

Really?

Yeah.

Rick has joined metal detection expert Gary Drayton
on Lot 5,
located near the middle of Oak Island.

Those flags to me say one thing:
let’s go find some stuff.

Okay, mate — you lead.

After purchasing Lot 5 just two weeks ago,
Rick, Marty, Craig, and the team
have already made a number of incredible discoveries —
including tools
and a musket ball that may predate the 16th century.

However,
they also found a hand-forged half-coin
that could be one of the oldest finds
ever made on Oak Island.

Okay, here’s the first flag, mate.
Oh yeah.
So… good.

Well, we’ll see what it is.
Just there, mate — that depression.

Having already flagged a number of metal targets
earlier this morning,
Gary Drayton has now received permission
from archaeologist Laird Niven
to dig them up.

I don’t want to dig too too aggressive.
That is crazy deep.

I’ll try pinpointing it
and then grabbing it out, then.

That is a little screamer of a signal.
There it is.
Here we go.

What the heck is that?
It’s thick
and heavy.

You know what that is —
the look of it.
This looks like some kind of blade-like tool.
This has got all the characteristics
of being something really old.

Another potentially ancient tool.

Is it possible that Gary and Rick
have found more evidence
that people were conducting an operation on Lot 5
long before the discovery of the Money Pit?

Okay, we’ll bag it.

If so… who was it?
And what were they doing
in the middle of Oak Island?

If it’s a tool,
why is it that deep?
That makes no sense.

Exactly.
Perfect candidate for XRF.

Yeah — it’s going to be exciting
finding out what it is.

Okay, mate.
Let’s get to the next flag.

---

Okay, now I’m getting another target.
Let me see if I can pinpoint it.

No… we’re not far away.
It’s somewhere in here.

It’s in this little area here.
Yeah, deeper down.
Got it — it’s in my hand.

All right.

What is it?
It’s in here somewhere.

Is it pottery?
I think it might be.
If it’s pottery,
it’s a weird design.

It’s pottery — glazed.
Brilliant.

Oh my goodness.

We’ve never seen that before.

No.
Way the hell down there.

Yeah.
Maybe you should look around in there
for more pottery.

We’ll take a look.
There actually is.

All right.
Oh my — bigger pieces.

But look how degraded it is.

Yeah, it is, isn’t it?
It’s not the same as that other piece.

There’s more, too.
Keep digging, Rick.

Actually, there’s quite a bit more.

Wow.
That’s some nice pieces of pottery.
And this looks like fine stuff.

Wow.
This is beautiful.

I want to know right away
how old that is.

Yeah.
I think we should stop.
Let’s get Laird over here.

Yep.
That’s a great idea.

Hey — and there’s the expert.

What an interesting spot.

Oh my heavens.

---

On Lot 5,
located on the western side of Oak Island,
archaeologists Laird Niven and Helen Sheldon,
along with Craig Tester,
join Rick, Marty, and Gary
to inspect a number of potentially important discoveries.

Got a lot of iron,
but now we’ve got some fantastic pottery out there.

Yeah.
Yeah.

And I don’t think we’ve seen
this style of pottery before.

See what you come up with.

That looks like pearlware.
There’s a series of standard designs.
You can actually date the designs.

These definitely — because of the decoration.

Okay.

That’s called press-molded.
And this sort of press-molding
started in 1740.

Well, that’s good.

Yeah.
The type of ceramic itself is 1720.

Wow.
Early 1700s.
That’s pretty cool.

Yeah.
It’s English.

Oh — it’s English.

Would the British military
have this type of pottery as well?

Oh yeah.
Sure.
It was common.

18th-century English pottery,
dating back more than 50 years
before the discovery of the Money Pit.

Because the team has previously found evidence
of an 18th-century British military operation
on Oak Island,
could this pottery offer more evidence
that someone of English origin
was connected to the 228-year-old mystery?

Or… were they looking for something
that had already been buried
centuries earlier?

But even as the team celebrated,
a quiet tension began to rise.
Because finds like this don’t just appear out of nowhere.
They trace back to hands,
to people,
to moments in history someone tried very hard to hide.

And as the scanners pushed deeper,
as the measurements tightened,
a new shape began to emerge beneath the soil.
Not random.
Not natural.
Deliberate.

A structure older than the Money Pit.
Older than the known maps of the island.
A structure that suggests someone was building here
long before any recorded settler
ever set foot on Oak Island.

And the deeper the team digs,
the more one unsettling question keeps surfacing:

If this wasn’t built by treasure hunters…
then who exactly was operating here
in complete secrecy
centuries before anyone was supposed to be?