Has anyone found something unusual or valuable inside an old house?

I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. Deer hunting with my dad. Came up on what was left of a really old house way out in the middle of the woods. Only thing left was the hand made rock chimney and some rotted wood. Also an old well near by. Pop was kicking his foot around the ground in what would have been the inside of the house if it were still standing. He kicked some leaves and such aside and low and behold there was a skull half buried in the ground. Childs skull by the look of it as it was small. From the look of the skull it appeared to be about as old as the remains of the house. We also found an old oxen yoke nearby. Pop took that home and repurposed it.

 

Not in the home but I was detailing one of my customers cars (05 Corvette) that he bought at the auction a few years back and discovered almost $60k in cash stuffed inside the doors behind the door panels. Tipped me $1k as a thank you but I think it was more hush money than anything else lol.

 

Just to show you what people that went thru the Great Depression did afterwards:

My Papaw passed away and dad had to go thru the house and get everything out cause he sold the property to a company that was going to demo the old house. As he was going thru it he found several wads of drinking straws, out of their paper coverings, wrapped up in rubber bands to keep them together. These straws were in shoe boxes. Inside each straw was a rolled up $100 bill. All in all, after finding those and going thru the house completely, he found over $8000 stuffed away in drinking straws.

 

I think some of that $1k tip was also for being so honest and not keeping it all.

 

Compared to the cash, this one is boring.
My buddy found this not long ago in the walls of his parent's house.

 

I'm still waiting for a discovery like that in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) where they find all that hidden loot behind the chalk board of an old school house:

 

20 yrs ago I had a side job as a caretaker for a property owned by a very wealthy old widow. She had no heirs. The house was full of antiques. When she passed, Sotheby’s auction house sold the furniture for over 2.5 million. Another auction company sold the household items, china, silverware etc.. for a bunch more. The Executor of the estate took what he wanted of what was left then told me to help myself. I loaded my truck three times with odds and ends, antique andirons from the fireplace, decorative plates, an oriental rug, the contents of the library, commercial grade pots and pans, cedar chests, and about 6 cases of top shelf liquor that had been purchased according to a reciept in 1965!. It took me about 2yrs to sell the stuff, I kept a few things, but I cleared about 9k. The oriental was worth $4000, and 2 auction houses missed it. It was in a cedar chest in the attic.

 

He's was one of my first customers and a long time regular at the time and ha

Whaaaaaa... He didn't repurpose the skull? Dude?

 

Nah, lol. We let that lay.

 

I think it's against the law for Joe Blow to be in possession of a human skull.

 

Yeah and that was like 40yrs ago. So, it wasn't like you just ran over to your local Sherriffs office to tell them about a skull you found. We were out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere town.

 

My cousins kid was a coin hound from the time she could talk. Used to collect coins, we didn't think anything of it. Her room was over the attic and there was this crawl space in there. They sold the house when the girl was 13 years old and started cleaning out the crawl space. All the coins added up to almost 12 grand. They had no idea.

 

My buddy purchased a house of an old laundry mat owner. There was a hidden door in the floor of the garage. He opened it and turned on the flashlight and seen jars and jars of coins. I guess the old man didn’t trust banks and didn’t like taxes too much lol. There was more then a few thousand down there. Took him years to turn in those coins and going through them to find the silver ones.

 

The law....pshhh LOL

 

Actually I just looked it up and it seems it is in fact not against the law to posses a human skull or any other human bones for that matter. Plenty of online sources for buying such things and fully legal to own.

 

Gotta get me some of them.

 

Kind of macabre but to each his own., i have deer and elk skulls all around our house