Heh. I go to a lot of estate/tag sales.
It never occurred to me to look inside books for money or suchlike. I can see how it would happen, including folding money tucked away for a rainy day.
If I adopt this cautionary tale, it would take too much time in my *schedule* of rounds to sales. Just dang!
“It never occurred to me to look inside books for money or suchlike. “
With my divorce, I had to clean out the house; get rid of a bunch of books, etc.
I took each and shook the pages. Out of one fell some of my ex’s email copies ....
A brother-in-law told me of a man he had known when he was a young man. This fellow was fond of attending auctions and estate sales and seldom passed up a yard sale. He had thousands of books in his attic, which he was going to go through “some day” in order to look for money that someone may have stashed in them.
The BIL doubts he ever got around to it, and the man has been gone for decades now.
There is a woman in my town who has been running an antique shop since the Eisenhower days (she is 90) who is always finding interesting and often lethal objects in her estate purchases. I have a good size hoard of Norma .45 ammunition she found in a dresser drawer.
When my mother had to clean out my grandmothers home she started tossing books into boxes. That is until money started falling out. Now grandma had become more than just a bit of a hoarder in her old age.
Over the years grandma had managed to stash over $20,000 in cash around her house. It was in books, magazines, mason jars tucked away, even literally under the mattress.
What was supposed to take a few days took almost a month.