re: Any of you have good stories about surprising finds cleaning the house of dead relatives?

Years ago there was this older lady who handled my taxes and her husband was a lawyer in a small town. We got to talking about the IRS and safety deposit boxes and she said that she handled the estate for a man who had passed away and she was the one who opened his safety deposit box. Inside was a pair of pantyhose and a 1/4 roll of duct tape.

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Around 30 years ago my uncle (dad’s brother) shot and killed my grandmother then later that night committed suicide. At the dual wake/funeral a guy who was a business customer of my dad (sort of a friend due to being a long time customer) showed up and asked my dad if they found any “erotica” that he’d want to sell in my uncle’s apartment since he knew he was single - the guy that asked was in his 50s-60s and said he “collects erotica”. He prefaced it with “I know this is a bad time to ask” or some bullshite like that, but I guess he wanted to make sure he was first in line if the opportunity existed. That has to be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen at a wake or funeral. Hard to imagine anything less appropriate.

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Did your uncle have any erotica?

What did you do with it?

I found the letters my grandfather got from the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Braves and the New York Yankees. The one from the Brooklyn Dodgers was from Branch Rickey. They wanted him to come play but he decided to enlist.

We found a French coin necklace in my aunt's dresser drawer costume jewelry after she passed away in the 80s. Mom kept it with her costume jewelry since then. I re-discovered it in 2007 when Mom died and kept it...just because.

When we moved in August last year, Mrs. 19 shows it to me and says, "why are we keeping this crap? It's broken." The pendant ring around the coin had broken at the clasp in transit. I threw it in my nightstand drawer and said "I dunno."

A month ago, my daughter found it and asked about it. I took the ring from around it and noticed engraving on the edge of the coin. Looked it up, and it's a fricking 1912 20-Franc gold "rooster."

Worth about $400.
A definite cool starry bra.

About 5 years ago we went early to the estate sale of aneighbor of my wife's grandmother who passed away at age 98. He was world war II vet and had a lot of stuff in boxes in his woodworking shop. I opened one of the boxes that was very heavy and in the bottom found something that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It was a m2k pineapple variety grenade with no holes drilled in it. It was no dummy grenade! that sucker was live with the pin still in. the old guy fought on Okinawa and probably walked off the boat with the thing in his duffel bag and just never got rid of it after the war.

After my great aunt died went to see what was in her safety deposit box- few old birth certificates and a loaded colt 45 revolver. My grandma was perplexed about how to get it out but I politely told the bank manager what was going on and had him unload it and carry it out to our car so my grams didn’t look like an outlaw in the bank.

Cleaning uncle’s house 20 years ago after he passed, found $3000 worth of old silver coins from the 1920’s. Split with his brother and still have my share.

I purchased my first house in Gentilly from someone who parents had died. The kids, from out west, took very little except for small family heirlooms and the house was left basically intact with all their stuff. We had house parties examining all the stuff and pretty much reconstructed their life.. Still have some of the furniture today like an old Singer sewing machine and other nice antique furniture.

When cleaning out a great aunts house, we found a box of cocoa powder from some old brand. Luckily someone shook it. It had about 35 diamonds in it. Smallest were 1/2cts up to 3's