Last weekend, I received a call asking if I could help with the estate of an older woman on the south side of our city. It’s an area of older row houses, dating to the late 1800s.
The attorney said they needed to assess the belongings including coins and boxes of baseball cards. Many of the cards were issued in the 1950s and ‘60s – the heyday for kids collecting ball cards. Others go back to the 1920s and ‘30s when cards were found on the back of cigarette packs.
Maybe there’s treasure there, or not. It reminded me of another home I was asked to help with about 25 years ago. It had been occupied by old spinster sisters who never owned a phone, a TV or an air conditioner. They did have a radio and a fan. They also left a cryptic note reminding their nephews to “not overlook the gold certificate.” OK, and where might that be?....
Though most of the furniture had been removed, we spent several days searching. I noticed some of the windowsills seemed loose. With a little tugging, the sills came up. Stacks of vintage paper money were inside. In the basement was an old coal chute replete with a pile of coal. On a hunch, we removed the coal. Several metal buckets appeared with cloths over the top. In them were blackened original rolls of quarters and dimes from the 1930s. Inside of those were pristine, gleamingly bright silver coins. Curiously, no gold certificate was found.
All this is proof that treasure can and will be found pretty much anywhere. For the coming year, that prospect is particularly exciting in light of other, recent happenstance finds.
Every so often, a jar or similar container of coins is found on the site of an old farm or building. That’s due to the mistrust many had for banks, especially during the Civil War. People were more comfortable burying their riches than entrusting them to strangers. Such wariness wasn’t confined to the United States.
Recently, in the basement of a house in Keszthely, Hungary an assortment of glass bottles was found containing spectacular silver and gold coins dating as far back as the Roman Empire. They’re worth a countless fortune. Evidently, in the 1940s, the home had been part of Hungary’s wartime ghetto. The owners clearly wanted to safeguard their valuables. Sadly, they died in concentration camps. If no connection to the original owners is found, the proceeds go to the state.
How about a man in Normandy, France who inherited furniture from now-dead relatives? While moving a chest of drawers he found a tin box attached to the bottom. It was filled with gold coins. More searching nearby revealed gold bars, chains and jewelry – over 5,000 gold objects purchased legally in the 1950s and ‘60s. Upwards of 200 pounds of gold worth $4 million was realized.
Here in the US, a man in Virginia decided to check out a box of old comic books from the 1930s and ‘40s his deceased uncle had collected as a youngster. It was the type mothers invariably throw away while the kids are at camp. In the box, the man found Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman; and Detective Comics #27, the first time Batman was featured. Just those two comics sold for over $800,000. The whole box brought over $3.5 million.
A most astounding find was in sleepy in Sandgate, Vermont – a crossroads just down the road from Tidd Hollow without even a store. While searching his father’s home there, a young man spied a seam in a wall that didn’t make sense. After a little work, he was able to open the paneling. Behind it he discovered an original Norman Rockwell painting entitled, “Breaking Home Ties.”
The problem was, that classic Rockwellian painting was already hanging in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After some investigation, it was determined the work in the museum was a reproduction. The one found in the wall was the original, apparently hidden by the father in the 1960s during a contentious divorce.
The father was said to have paid $900 for the painting in 1960. Today, original Rockwell’s sell for millions. In 2013, his work, “Saying Grace” sold for $46 million.
It’s always exciting to see what turns up from year to year. Given these results, it’s a safe bet people will be looking just a bit closer in 2022.
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