Professional Treasure-seekers?

[Sardy]

""Professional stealth?" cried Balin, taking up my words rather differently than I had meant them. "Do you mean a trained treasure-seeker? Can they still be found?"" --from Unfinished Tales, The Quest of Erebor

I just re-read this passage and it struck me as quite intriguing. Just who were these "trained treasure-seekers" for whom Balin and the company of Dwarves seem to have so much respect, awe and admiration for? What great adventures did they partake in that they could have so impressed the unimpressionable Dwarves? And even more importantly, what has happened to them that they can no longer be found, indeed, the profession no longer seems to even exist?

One excerpt that really struck me was this:

""Ah! I see your drift at last," said Balin. "He is a thief, then? That is why you recommend him?""

This disparaging opinion of "thieves" on Balin's part strikes me in that there is a definite difference between the aforementioned "trained treasure-seekers" and a common, run-of-the-mill thief.

It would seem that the treasure-seekers were the stuff of legend... So who were they... any mention in Tolkien's works of them as a class or organized profession?

[Rhod the Red]

Mercinaries from the sound of it, adventurers who also want a cheque so to speak. Gandalf also mentions heroes, saying they were busy fighting wars and unavaliable to help in the quest to Erebor.

[Thinlómien]

I guess this goes again back to the differences between the Middle-Earth in the Hobbit and the Middle-Earth of the Lord of the Rings. In the more fairytale-like world of the Hobbit, professional adventurers may pop from behind any corner. But in the world of the Lord of the Rings, that'd sound a bit silly. Maybe there were some mercenaries, but I think they were not very usual, and a gruff mercenary is far from an idealist jolly adventurer.

The problem, of course is, that these two worlds are the one and the same world, if we want to see this matter from the Middle-Earth, not the literary perspective. So my guess'd be that there were some of those mercenaries (which would include professional burglars) and the "heroes" would be such as (for example) Beleg in the Silmarillion or as Legolas and Gimli, professional warriors/soldiers/scouts or nobility trained in the arts of war, whose assignments happen to be adventure-like, for example steal the eggs of the giant spider and bring them to Thranduil to examine. (Okay, that was a stupid example. ) And when such person earns enough reputation in such dangerous assignments, I guess some people will start calling him or her a hero.

But to a professional seeker of some abandoned or dragon-guarded treasure I'd say: "No, you don't belong in Middle-Earth."

[Rhod the Red]

Like Bill Ferney?

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Rhod the Red

Like Bill Ferney?

If you ask me, Bill Ferny was just an ordinary man with an ordinary job, who started doing the spy/ruffian job, not a professional or anything.

[Sardy]

Here's an odd thought:

The part that strikes me the most about the excerpt is Balin's surprise at the thought that these "treasure-seekers" might STILL be around. And also the seeming differentiation in the minds of the Dwarves that treasure-seekers are deserving of respect whereas hired thieves do not.

Suppose that these "treasure-seekers", as the Dwarves call them, are actually the Rangers, the remnants of the Dunadain---of course their true nature remaining secret and skewed by the Dwarves' own penchant for seeing only the greed in others?