Posted on 05/30/2005 1:03:54 PM PDT by wagglebee
Linda Stafford has been going to garage sales for 30 years, and taking good-natured ribbing from her family all the while.
Now, the tables have turned.
Stafford has found more than $3,000 in bills dating from 1928 to 1953 in the bottom of a high-backed chair she bought at a garage sale — for two bucks.
"When we found the money, they could probably hear us screaming all over the neighborhood," said Stafford, 57.
She made the discovery while trying to make room in her garage for more furniture. When one of her daughters, Mandy Rath, heard something rattle in the chair, they removed the bottom. Placed inside a compartment were two paper packets, one with $10 in coins, the other with $3,060 in bills.
Stafford remembers what she paid for the chair, but not where she bought it.
"I know that I've had it out in our garage for at least a year, maybe two," she said.
But, Stafford was not sure how she would spend the money.
"Who knows?" she said. "I might spend it all at garage sales."
She should check those coins and bills, she may have more than she thinks.
Ah! That's where my money went...
Maybe, maybe not. Even if she remembered, I bet a diet coke that there would be clamoring and pressure on her to return the money, even though she bought the chair.
Am I wrong on that?
I hadn't even thought about that, at the very least all of the quarters are silver.
The money notes are silver certificates...are they not?
MAN, she must REALLY go to a lot of garage sales! How could you forget?!
I would have kept quiet if it was my find.
And the bills could be Silver Certificates.
Is that a caffeine-free diet coke or just a diet coke? :)
I'd bet many coins and bills that old have value as collectibles aside from their monetary value.
Actually, I find that quite believable. I've often remember the price of things I've bought at garage sales. The garages, on the other hand, all run together.
Whoever stuffed the money in that chair probably went through the Bank Holiday. There was lots of hoarding into the 40s.
Hmmmmm....maybe I ought to check that stereo console out a little closer.....;^)
First I've=I
Selective forgetting. She doesn't want bad Karma.
We had a case here a few years ago where a bag of baby clothes was sold at a garage sale. The woman selling the items apparently did not know her husband had been hiding money in the bag. The police went to the media and said they were looking for the buyers and were thinking of pressing charges against them for not returning the money.
Yeah, that approach will work.
Likely the result of a stash during the banking crisis of the great depression. The true owner of the money, who put it there is long dead. Furthurmore, I'm willing to bet that the people she bought this from at the garage sale acquired the chair second or third-hand themselves and don't have any moral claim to the loot either.
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