one of my fave topics from childhood (Goonies, Peter Pan, Indiana Jones, etc)! i have been reading about Michel van Rijn, a famous antiquities thief/dealer, for some research and saw there was a movie, The Iconoclast, supposedly in the works about him, but can't seem to find anything else about it other than the original mention in an interview. i have a gabillion storylines floating around for today's idea(s). must narrow it down... hhmmm... decisions decisions.

I've been interested in the Amber Room for a while, but it's a question of finding the right plot to place it in...

it's fascinating, isn't it? so many conspiracies and folklore about what happened to all the Nazi plunder...

The Amber Room (Horror!) When a recently divorced historian receives a mysterious package containing a panel from the famously lost Amber Room, she discovers the panel is haunted by tortured souls, which refuse to give her peace until the other pieces of the room are found and assembled.

I liked the sound of Cocos Island and had a quick Wiki....it is only 8x3 km, so not that big. As well as the Lima treasure, apparently there are 350 tons of gold plundered from Spanish Galleons by the Pirate Bennett Graham. She was arrested and taken to a penal colony and tried to find the treasure on release but, apparently, the terrain had changed enough from the map she owned to make it impossible to find the treasure. Could definitely liven this up, with a prison break by a treasure chasing skalliwag, to rescue Mary and her map and take her back to Cocos, where they could come up against other treasure hunters and the ghost of dead pirates - feel like I am straying into Goonies territory here! We can have a romance, back-stabbing double-crosses - pirates are trouble, we all know that! Maybe a skip to modern day descendants from Mary's line who find an old map and travel to the island to find the treasure.... Great scope for an Indy-style adventure with booby-traps, pirates, curses and, of course, scurrilous monkeys!

Oh, that's a fun idea! Like insects in amber, but souls in amber...

An archeologist discovers that a trinket dug up during a recent expedition is in fact an alien artifact, and as he uncovers it's mystery, he realizes that it leads to a trove of technology, knowledge and a means to communicate with an interstellar race. However, as more information turns up, it's clear that the trove is located near the cradle of civilization, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, smack in the middle of a war zone. But he's not the only one who knows. Now he must race a charismatic madman who wants to use the tech to expel infidels from his land and establish his own reign upon the rest of the world.