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

Wheat pennies, nickels, dimes, etc.

 

Not exactly relevant, but my dad, rest his soul used to be the guy that filled newspaper racks (got me my first job - paperboy, at age 8). We were def a working class family.

He came home after his night shift with a massive, what must’ve been a ~3 oz gold ring with a gold coin set in it. Iirc it was 18kt. He left it on his night stand and I of course found it and wanted to show it off to my friends. I was carrying it around in my hand when my friends and I decided we’d pick up rocks from someone’s front yard and start throwing them at the house. This particular house had THICK and tall weeds and ferns throughout the yard. I was firing rocks at the siding and had the ring in the same hand with the rocks, and as I was throwing rocks at the house I grabbed what I expected to be a rock and threw it, then I saw it flying and saw that it was the ring. Never found it. Would be worth about, what, $3600 now?

 

The bunker is a great bonus though!

 

Found a wooden play thing in the back yard. Flipped if for 3 bills

 

You prob know but some of those are silver. I can’t remember which year but I think the nickels in one of the war years were silver as they needed the nickel for manufacturing.

 

Your posting reminds me of the movie Hidden, they found the same stuff in a bomb shelter.

 

I found an Indian head penny and a few other coins on the very bottom under the bottom shelf of a dresser someone threw out.

 

My cousin and her husband bought some land and an old house. They were going to try and reclaim wood from the house for the new one.
Hidden in a wall they found a large stash of confederate money..that was pretty cool!

 

Amazing, the places people hide money.

Your posting reminds me of this local story, that till this day I don't know what they were thinking. These roofers found $125,000 in old currency in a gutter. Here is the story: https://www.foxnews.com/story/fourth-man-arrested-in-buried-treasure-case

 

Digging into a wall of my first house I found part of the magazine section of an old newspaper that mentioned an new movie that had just come out--Casablanca. As I recall the reviews were not really favorable.

 

like Al Capones vault...

 

In a barn at the in-law's old farm found a chest containing the planes matching the profile of the window casings and baseboards in the century home of the farm. Maybe they got left behind by a shady builder?

 

or just the farmer was the builder of the house...

 

That's possible, but I've seen the carpentry skills of the later generations

 

depends...some wood workers were really meticulous...

 

1890's inlay tool box..not mine but still good work.

 

My brother and I were flipping a house, going from 1 bed to 2 beds. While taking out a wall I found a Popular Mechanics from 1954 with a rocket on the cover with the caption, "Rocket to the Moon. Can it happen?" The messed up thing was that rats had eaten about 1/4 of it and built a nest with it.

 

I remember digging around my friend's basement a few years back when he and I were on good terms and his walls had insulation but what looked like newspapers nailed over the studs to keep it in there. When I looked closer, everything was in reverse and turns out they were newspaper printing plates. His grandmother used to run one of the most well known antique shops in town before she retired and closed everything down so naturally there was always all sorts of cool shit here and there. In the front of the garage, there was a 1937 chevrolet pickup truck that wasn't running that his dad has been trying to get him to work on but that's not quite his style as well as a stripped down truck also from the 30s behind it that his grandfather used to race at bonneville in the 1960s. Both are in pretty sad shape when I saw them back in 2012 and I have a feeling they've stayed that way since.

 

Neat thing about National Twist Drill and Tool Co., is that they're still in business as Regal Tool.