Unexpected Treasure Find

[Gerontius]

I found a live kitten in the wall of a building I used to work at. Kitten went home with me & got re-homed with the neighborhood cat lady.

Found a box of Edison phonograph cylinders for $20 and it was an original carrying case for them, dating about 1899-1904.
Found a 1937 radio in an Art Moderne case for $20.
For books, I got the first Catholic study bible printed in English--a Haydock's Bible. Mine is an 1886 printing. After three months' waiting I bought it for $100.

In a pawn shop a $15 broken pocket watch turned out to be a 1922 Waltham made of solid silver, valued around $500.
At a phonograph show, a $150 generic pocket watch turned out to be a 1927 Hamilton 992 railroad watch, value of $700. (That one I still have. One might as well have a cool watch.)

Bought a bunch of old Victrola records for 25 cents apiece & found an autographed Johnny Marvin record in there from like 1928.

Hm...In a thrift shop I found a pile of parts priced separately in the kitchen wares: turns out they all went together & it made a Sunbeam Coffee-Master from 1950, very Art Deco, 1939 looking. Still works on its original steel filter. Paid $15.

Bought a little folding camera, the bellows kind, at an antique shop for $20. Turns out it was a 1929 Agfa Traveller with its original box and owner's manual. Not bad. It still takes pictures too.

Found an old suitcase in an antique store with a $5 price tag on it--it was a 1929 Brunswick portable phonograph, another hand-cranked one. When I got it home the missing pieces were inside it. I restored it & played records on it and made the mistake of selling it for $45.

I love treasure hunting.

 

[Mia]

Have been digging in the ground since I was a young child. My first find was a copper chopstick tray with an Edo period design etched in the metal, I still use it for pens.
A large pottery jug with a cork, with 1860 painted on the side that used to hold molasses. Which I sold to collector for $200.00.
An iridescent glass bottle that held 'sirop de gomme d'epinette, par les soeurs de la providence.'
A 1940's italian brevetti robbiati espresso maker that I found at a thrift store for twelve dollars.

A beautiful vintage Dale of Norway sweater for fifteen dollars:

I could probably go on and on, but one of my more lucrative finds were two 1950's Chanel tweed suits in perfect condition that I bought for twenty dollars each at a garage sale. Which I sold.

The things I've dug up or found and kept all along are fossils, a pottery inkwell, an ink pen holder and the copper chopstick tray.

 

[SusanLR]

I like looking for fossils and arrowheads and unusual rocks.

I've found several nice meteorites, a large stone of Azurite, geodes, crystals, an old civil war
cannon ball in a creek, a mastadon tooth fossilized into many colours, large feathers, a child's gold and
blown glass rosary dug up in a field. Very old, probably from some of the first settlers here.
Love to find natural things like that or ancient pieces of pottery near an indian mound close by.

People have asked what I would like from some distant place they are going on vacation to and
I always tell them to keep their eyes open as the Earth will provide a gift.
And they always see something like rocks, fossils, beach glass, drift wood, even a few rings by the beach.
Occasionally I've found money on the ground. Nothing huge. Nice find though.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

I regularly do volunteer litterpicks and sometimes find £5, £10, and once a £20 note.

When my grandma died she left my sister and I her jewelry. We had always thought her quite poor, but when I went an antique jewelers to sell it all, thinking it would mostly be costume jewelry worth nothing, it earned us >£10,000, even with both my sister and I keeping a ring worth >£1000 each.

 

[WoodWorkingJoel]

I came back from a hunting trip with my ak47 and on the way home I stopped into my local bank.
The cashier must have liked me because she handed over way more cash than I expected and I didn't even fill in the paperwork.