A great find under dirty carpet
Man goes to clean grandparents house—but what he finds
under dirty carpet—he’s calling for help
By
We all dream about how cool it would
be to dig up a buried treasure.
But
for one Reddit user, it became a reality.
Known only by his username
“EvilEnglish,” the man had often visited his grandparents’ farmhouse in
Tennessee. They would read him Treasure Island, which introduced
him to the idea of secret riches hiding just beneath the surface.
The grandparents owned the house for
20 years, using it as a summer home “to escape the oppressive summer heat of
the South.”
However, the grandfather died in
1998, and the home had been abandoned since. The grandmother never visited the
country house before she died, and neither did their son, who inherited the
house after she passed away in 2009.
The home then fell to EvilEnglish,
who was left to prepare the home for sale—and after two decades of neglect,
found that the home was in disrepair.
“Lots and lots of work to do here as
it is an old house,” he wrote in a post that has since been deleted, according
to Messy Nessy.
“I
was working in a closet below the stair case, and saw that the rug was pretty
disgusting.”
He had to pull out the dirty rug,
but as he was doing so he noticed something strange. There was concrete
underneath, even though all the floors were hardwood.
When he pulled the rug out, he found
a circular cap in the middle of the concrete:
When he pulled the cap off, he was
stunned by what he discovered:
“A
secret safe!”
However, obviously, he was unable to
get it open. He called local locksmiths, but none were available for several
days. He called his mom, who confirmed that his grandparents kept a safe under
the floorboard—but none of her suggested combinations worked.
Finally, a locksmith arrived to
help—but getting it open was a challenge, even for him.
“He
said about 30 mins into this that if he had known what he was getting into, he
would have referred the job to someone else.”
But
finally, he was able to get into the safe.
Looking in, he saw what looked like
a pile of bricks. He was dismayed that there also appeared to be a moisture
build up, thanks to a pipe leak from years back, which likely damaged whatever
was inside.
But what he found didn’t disappoint.
It
was his grandmother’s collection of collectible coins and dollars.
Fittingly for a buried treasure, the
safe contained countless boxes of rare coins.
“I knew my Grandmother collected
coins, but I thought we had found all of them!” he wrote.
While the water damaged some of the
books, the coins themselves were still in perfect condition.
When he shared his findings on
Reddit, many coin-collecting users chimed in to let him know what his
collection was worth.
One user told him that the Prestige
sets were worth $20 each minimum—but the most valuable thing was silver coins.
“At the moment their melt value is
17.3 times face value,” they wrote. “With low silver prices and extremely high demand
for physical silver, most respectable dealers will pay you melt right now.”
He also noted that the silver bars
were worth about $24 each:
They
even said the torn-up dollar bills might be valuable, or could at least be
exchanged for modern currency.
All
in all, the grandson stood to make a pretty nice sum of cash, given the amount
of coins.
But
the treasures didn’t even end there.
He also found a rusty toolbox. He
didn’t think much about it, until he got it open…
And
found that it was full of jewelry!
It’s almost as if his grandparents
remembered reading Treasure Island to their grandson decades ago
and left a treasure hunt for him to one day find. That’s probably not the case,
but it’s still a fitting closure to the old childhood home.
Hopefully he lucked out and got some
good money for the haul. But either way, he still got a great story out of it:
he discovered an actual hidden treasure, right where he least expected it.
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