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."
Didn't say it was. But my willingness to pay even the small stated premium does rather give the lie to your statement that said bills are worth only ''face value'', true?
I'll take the new ten- an old one is only worth a dollar.
:^)
I plead guilty, your Honour, to having placed pennies on the railroad track (and then scrambling to find them).
There are a couple of $50s that embarrass even the scarcest $100s in premia, btw. And a 1914 $500 will shock you, what it's worth on the open mkt.
As with anything, the premium for currency notes over face is a direct function of both scarcity AND the number of people who collect said bill(s).
BTW, and no fair Googling, do you just happen to know WHOSE face is on the highest denomination banknote ever issued in the US? Hint: said note was NOT in general circulation, ever.
About 6 years ago, I found a very old, large folio New Testament at a flea market. I was in a hurry so I bought it for $35 and put it on a shelf at home where it sat for a couple of years. One day I took a look at it closely. It was printed in 1600, belonged to Lord William Calvert, contained the handwritten records of births, marriages and deaths in the Calvert family until after the Civil War and had letters dated from the Revolutionary War tucked in the pages. I contacted members of the Calvert family through a genealogical group. But no one in the Calvert family was interested in buying it for the going price for this particular volume (the price if it did not have any signatures or historical references) even though they verified the handwritten signatures as being authentic. Several family members requested that I copy the family history for them. I wound up selling it to a collector in California for a big chunk of change.
I think it's Samuel Chase
LOL
I think I have spoken about this before, but I'll go over it again. My family used to have a "coin box", that old money was kept in. My father liked to collect coins, and he had some VERY rare ones in the box, including some spanish, or some other foreign coins ,(dozens of them) ALL in those little protector sleeves.(these were not peso-sized things, they kinda looked like silver dollars, just different) There was a roll of uncirculated 50 cent pieces from 1964,Probably 50 silver dollars, and several genuine confederate bills(ONE of them, I remember, had the train on the front), and all sorts of old coins and bills, from the 60-back, to the 18's.
In 1984, a Jerk, drugged-out thief, stole those coins. They would most likely had been worth 20k, by now.
H. Woodrow Wilson (on whose watch the Fed was established) appears on the $100,000 note, which was only circulated between Fed branches. SecTreas Chase, iirc, appears on the $10000 note and James Madison on the $5000.
I bought a $3 purse at a thrift store and scored $120 once. Thought I'd won the lottery.
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