What's your best story?

Here is my favorite story of my collection. I posted it here a long time ago in a thread entitled "A Coin with a Story" and about 6 months ago Peter dug it up and posted it on the CT home page as one of the featured posts. Anyway, here is a link to it...I don't want to just copy it over:

http://www.cointalk.com/content/7-coin-story.html

 

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Back in the 70's during the recession, I got some work repairing and rehabbing repossessed houses for a bank. Cleaning out a garage, I cam across a box of old books. All leather bound copyrighted in the 1800's. There was a Winchester hammer head with the same stylized logo the rifles have. At the bottom of the box were 2 Shield nickels, a 1865 holed and an 1868 worn. A "Stoups Billard Hall" 5c token. The books & the hammer head were stolen from me, but I still have those coins. But I always thought the books might have been valuable. At least they were to the employee working for my father who disappeared the same time. LOL

 

my best is when i traded my ADMIRAL 19A11 tv for part of someones collection of large cents. when i first saw the tv at an antique shop it fully worked. tube and sound. the 2nd time i tried it out the tube burnt out but i still bought it anyway because i liked the look of it alot and thats when i was collecting radios also. i never got around to fixing it because thats when i started to lose my interest for having a bunch of large radios in my room. years later i posted it on craigslist and i think i was trying to get 80 (I kinda forgot). got one person to look at it but not interested enough to make a fair offer. the 2nd person was a guy who was into radios and the whole shabang. must of been talking to the guy for 60-90 minutes. he wasnt really interested in buying the tv but i asked him about coins - then large cents and what is the chance that someone else you dont even know has their own collection of large cents. i ask him if he would make a trade instead of paying me which he said he would. he came over the next day with his book. it was missing alot of the early dates. he only had 4 draped busts and 1 classic head if i remember right. alot of matrons and petites. he gave me alot of his doubles and i think i got to choose one more which was between a 1805 and 1802. i took the 1805. alot of the doubles that i got were a 1803 and a bunch of petite heads. i think i got about 11 in all and then he gave me a late date lincoln cent book i dont think he cared about. he offered to give me one of those new york east india trading co coins but i said i didnt care for the colonial stuff. he was going to try and repair the tv with his parts. he also said he had newcombs book which he would give me if he could find it but we never talked again. anyways thanks to him i had more of a collection instead of just some corroded 1803 i got off of ebay. thats got to be my best story.

this story also happened to be one of my first threads here.

 

Okay, one more story from my youth.

I’ve mentioned on several occasions that I am originally from Rockville, Maryland which is about 20 miles northwest of Washington, DC. A lot of people don’t realize that Maryland was a border state during the Civil War, and there were many families that had sons fighting for both sides. Maryland was also a slave state, and there used to be three old plantations in the area. One, the Woodward Estate, was on the east side of Rockville along what became Twinbrook Parkway; one was on the north side along Old Baltimore Road, and one was west of Rockville along what became Falls Road.

The mansion on Old Baltimore Road eventually became the Rockville Civic Center in the 50’s. The long-vacant Woodward Estate fell into such disrepair that it was eventually demolished. We used to pass by the old mansion on Falls Road pretty regularly on our way to Great Falls on the Maryland side of the Potomac River. Its private drive was more than a quarter-mile long, and from that distance, the mansion still appeared to be in pretty good shape despite the fact that it had apparently been vacant since the 30’s. I can only assume that the heirs of the family kept it in decent condition in hopes of getting a good sale price at some point in the future. Anyway, the slave quarters had long since disappeared, the fields had become overgrown with high weeds and tall trees but the barn still remained about one mile away from the main house.

In the late 50’s the property was finally sold. The new owner was inspecting the barn on one occasion, and there was a huge pile of rotted hay still inside. In the process of removing the rotted, smelly mess, he found that there were nine barrels buried beneath the pile. Each of these barrels was about 4’ tall, and when he tried to move one of them, it wouldn’t budge. Upon removing the lid, he found a layer of hay and beneath it was a layer of Mason jars, another layer of hay, another layer of Mason jars, and so on. Every one of the barrels was filled with Mason jars, hundreds of them, and every one was filled with coins!

Bear in mind, this estate had been vacant since the 30’s. To me, it’s a perfect example of being filthy rich!

Chris