Too simple puzzles, discomfort, doubts … After thirty-two years, the disclosure of the place of the hiding place of the precious volatile, with the broadcast last night of the film “The discovery of the great gold”, did not only do happy.
Photo Romain Costaseca/Hans Lucas/Hans Lucas via AFP
By Stéphane Jarno
Posted on May 03, 2025 at 5:01 p.m.
LHe happiness was in the meadow. More precisely in an undergrowth on the side of Dabo, a Mosellan village where the golden owl has long waited to be discovered. Found last October, this trophy of value estimated at some hundred and fifty thousand euros, fascinated several thousand players, for more than thirty years. Coming from all over the world, the “owners” worked for a long time on the eleven puzzles that had to be resolved to finally find the right place and close this game of XXL tracks.
Many had spotted Dabo, ratified the municipal territory with metal detectors and drilled everywhere, but in vain. Presented last night with great fanfare in some five hundred cinemas (!), A documentary film, “the discovery of the great golden”, finally heard the light.
Despite or manipulation?
But at the end of the projection, the reactions of the spectators were mixed. Very surprised by the “simplicity” of the solutions revealed, also frustrated that the owl could be unearthed in a place that they often have the impression of having passed in the sieve, many participants were skeptical. Already questioned, in particular in a book which speaks openly of scam and whose author has since been condemned for defamation, several times attacked in justice, the organization represented by Michel Becker only surviving co -founder (his partner Max Valentin died in 2009), has not managed to dispel discomfort and doubts.
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The golden owl found thirty years later: “It will become a place of pilgrimage”
And this despite the intervention of a bailiff who came to attest to the reality of the cache. The association of researchers from the golden owl (A2CO) already, according to our colleagues from the “world”, announced its intention to file a complaint, as the solutions on the film are “strongly subject to question”. Simple despite or vast manipulation? Justice will decide, perhaps. Pending Michel Becker has already announced the launch of a new treasure hunt. Beware of you, the night raptor has not said its last word. Nice, not dead!
