Posted on 10/27/2007 3:25:18 PM PDT by BGHater
Jeff Bidelman already was dragging a huge bag of old coins when he noticed a hole in the wall of a dilapidated Windber home.
“The woman said when she was a kid, there were always rumors that that’s where they threw money,” Bidelman said at his business, Rare Collectibles, in The Galleria in Richland Township.
Within minutes, Bidelman and the former residents’ daughter discovered that the rumors were true. Bidelman found himself literally wading in old, valuable coins.
“They think they are going to get (at least) $100,000,” Bidelman said. “I think they will probably get $200,000.”
The home had been unoccupied for almost 20 years, and the former family members who were living there have died, Bidelman explained. Their children asked Bidelman to look through the home for items of value.
“I was upstairs digging around,” Bidelman said. “I found a whole pile of coins.”
Scooping them into a plastic bag, he had to drag the heavy load and was starting downstairs when he noticed a hole in the wall.
“You don’t just have a hole in the wall,” he said.
He asked the late owners’ daughter to explain the hole, and she recalled the family rumors from her youth.
Bidelman quickly found the first-floor wall below the hole and began tapping near the floor. It sounded solid.
“When I got to about teeth level, I heard, ‘chink, chink,’” he said.
Bidelman opened the wall and the coins rushed out, “ballooning” under pressure.
Coins that have been sorted so far date from 1826 through 1964 and include large cents and seated Liberty dimes.
The coins have been removed from the old house and placed in secure locations.
So far, Bidelman has sorted and cataloged coins with a face value of about $8,500. Value to collectors will be much more, Bidelman said, adding he is already putting some items on the popular Internet auction site eBay.
There were several “large cent” coins, which were minted from 1793 to 1857. The face value is one cent, but Bidelman expects to get at least $20 each.
The family asked Bidelman not to identify them or the location of the home, especially after reading recent news reports of a woman who allegedly tried to burglarize a Windber home while the family was attending a funeral.
Good thing they kept the house!
Lavere Redfield they weren’t, but not bad!
Nice find. I found three rifles and a WW2 era 1911 just over the eaves in our attic soon after we moved in. My guess is that the previous owner stashed them up there and forgot about them. Oh, well finder’s keepers.
Let’s spread rumors about some old houses in Detroit...
;-)
Holy Sh!t! I actually moved to Windber for 5 years (girl, long story) but I never imagined that something lke this could be true! They’re very good people, the area just does NOT exude wealth. Good for them.
When My parents bought a house in the early 80’s I found a stack of nudie mags and a hand written list of about 40 names of women in a covered hole where the sewer pipe came up out of the foundation. I always wondered who those names were.
(Of course finders keepers and I never told my parents) :)
They’re going wish they kept quiet about their find. Expect the IRS to come a-knockin’.
I moved out of a house once and left Grandpa’s old Harrington and Richardson on the top shelf of the closet.
It was a top break .38 short (I think) and the new occupants called me to come retrieve the pistol.
I was pretty damn embarrassed.
Not unless they sell them! The face value of the coins is probably just a few dollars.
Yeah, but at least you got it back. I tried contacting the previous owner since the pistol was probably a family heirloom too, but he had just passed away, and his wife told me to keep the guns, she didn’t want the “nasty things”. Her loss. my gain.
I once found a rare cache of RC Cola bottles and got 2 cents a bottle, and I didn’t report it on my quarterly.
LMAO!!
I found a stack of Playboys in the cellar of our new house.
“They’re going wish they kept quiet about their find. Expect the IRS to come a-knockin’”
Yup. Like the U.S.S. Central America. Watch all the a$$holes come around with their hand out. U.S.S. Central America story linked below :
http://archive.observernews.com/stories/archives/history/salvage.shtml
They get a basis step-up if the owner is deceased.
The real puzzle will be whose property the coins were.
$8,500 face value. Mostly silver coins probably, would have a melt value around 10 times their face value in today dollars. But collectors will pay quite a bit more for certain dates and mintmarks.
He never spent much of anything and even plowed up his entire city lawn and planted a garden every year.
Every quarter the shop management would have to get on him for never cashing his checks because their books wouldn’t balance. He just horded them.
When he died back in the late 70’s his family that wound up with his old house found over 100K in bills in his walls!
Was it anything like the Harrington at above URL.
My favorite handgun porn site.:}
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