3 True Stories of Hidden Treasure (relax a bit & read a fun article for a change)

[SoCalDem]

3 True Stories of Hidden Treasure
by Jill Krasny
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/113186/true-stories-hidden-treasure-mainstreet

From a million-dollar nickel to a hidden surprise in the attic, MainStreet readers share their incredible true stories of found treasure. When we stumble upon a penny in the street, we tend to shrug it off, thinking that it's pointless to stop and pick it up. After all, we tell ourselves, how much is a penny worth, anyway?

But imagine if that penny were a nickel, and not just any nickel, but an extremely rare one that had been sought after by numismatics for years and was valued at $2.5 million. Ryan Givens's uncle, the famed collector George Walton, possessed such a coin, but when his estate left the nickel to Givens's mother, it ended up sitting in her closet gathering dust for nearly four decades until Givens was prodded to take a second look. MainStreet decided to look at what it means to "luck into" found treasure, and all the exciting ways this can happen. From Givens's heartwarming tale of the Liberty Head nickel that vindicated his uncle to a historical ranch in Lampasas, Texas, that literally abounds with buried treasure, MainStreet is excited to share three tales that are sure to boggle your mind and inspire you to clean out your closet.

Up in the Attic

Steven Hoffer had a hunch there was treasure lurking in his parents' attic when he dropped by one day to sort through the many boxes that had been sitting there, sealed, for nearly 30 years. "I was an only child, an odd kid," says the part-time recording artist from a suburb outside of San Francisco. "I always kept track of my toys really well, everything I had I really saved. But once you grow up and see that you have stuff, you watch shows and you want to get as much money as you can." The "sea of boxes" crowding his parents' attic were mostly labeled 1975 or 1976, but many were filled with belongings dating to 1977, the year when an epic space opera from George Lucas sparked a serious toy obsession for Hoffer.

"It was almost like found money," the composer says of the 50 sets of first edition Star Wars toys he found in the attic. "Instantly, it's like I had this investment that I was forced to now manage and make proper decisions on. I found that I'm sitting on a gold mine that's worth up to $10,000." Hoffer took it upon himself to thoroughly research the toys and sell them in bulk to a comic book store in San Francisco. "They were blown away, but didn't want to show their full enthusiasm," he recounts of the sellers, especially since he's been told by friends that the collectors market is tough. But for Hoffer, the items were an unexpected windfall that came at a rather tough time.

"I have friends that tell me, 'Hold onto this, maybe the value will go up in 20 years or so'," he says. "But I work in the music industry and things are tight right now, so I definitely see this as a way of supplementing my income. This investment was dumped on my lap. I don't have a personal attachment."

snip

[WinkyDink]

1. THANKS! Treasure stories, from "The Atocha" to, well, anything, are my FAVES!

It's the "Count of Monte Cristo" effect!

[SoCalDem]

2. My 32 yr old son still has all his Masters of the Universe stuff

with boxes & original receipts in some cases..

[WinkyDink]

5. I was too destructive as a Boomer kid, drawing on toys, cutting the hair on a Mme Alexander doll,

etc.
Plus, I was the proverbial kid whose mother gave away all her comics, and when I say "all," I mean every single Superman/Lois Lane/Supergirl/Jimmy Olson/Detective/World's Finest/Katy Keene/Archie/Little Lulu ca.1955-1963.

I've re-collected a few over the years, though!

[TlalocW]

3. We all kind of smiled patronizingly and put up with Mom's coin collection

She had been saving certain coins since the 1950s when she and dad had a small grocery store on what was then a well-traveled road in Kansas. Until recently, she had them in some safe deposit boxes in a town she lived in when I was in college in the 90s. She's now living with one of my sisters and her family, and last Christmas, we took it upon ourselves to go get her collection so we could finally catalog it.

First roadblock - none of the keys we had were keys to the boxes so we had to hire a locksmith to open the boxes for us.

Next roadblock was eye strain, as my sister and I spent a couple of evenings going through each type of coin and dividing them up into piles of years - some dating to the early 1910s, some pure silver, etc. She also had some paper money that we divided up as well.

Third roadblock was finding containers to keep everything divided, finally settling on plastic cups with sticky notes in them to let us know what they were.

In the end, after the collection was taken to an appraiser, we were offered $20,000 for it. My sister, however, didn't sell, as she's very smart. After another few months, she checked again and was offered $40,000 for it. She's still not selling, and I trust her. Mom is getting up there and having medical problems, and while her insurance and medicare is taking care of things, you never know. But we're not smiling patronizingly anymore. Mom knew what she was doing.

TlalocW

[WinkyDink]

4. I started collecting pennies as a kid; you know, with the little book with coin slots. But gave up.

[TlalocW]

6. My brother did that for a while

He might still have some of those books. He was a pretty good investor too - he collected comics (for reading and investment) and various sports cards. He was able to sell some of his card collection for a $3000 profit when he went off to college. Most impressive investment to me was his buying a Thor comic, which was not one of his regulars (he liked the X-Titles, which I more or less gave up on when you needed a degree in quantum physics and 5 foot square flow charts to understand the entire Phoenix saga, which as far as I know is still going on now). Anyway, he bought it for 75 cents, I believe. In a year it was worth $15.00 because it was the first time someone had ever taken away Thor's hammer and was worthy enough to wield it - an alien named Beta Ray Bill, who eventually got his own hammer from Odin so Thor could get his back.

On edit - I looked Beta Ray Bill up on Wikipedia, and they had a graphic of the comic cover in his entry. It was 60 cents not 75 cents, and it was in 1983, when my brother was 13.

TlalocW