My Once In A Lifetime Find!

Going to share a little story that is big to me. Every once in a while, someone posts a once in a lifetime find. I just had mine!

This past weekend, my father delivered a pile of boxes to me. 17 boxes, most of which is my mom's glassware and he wanted it gone from his garage as he prepares to move himself. One of the boxes was labeled as Pictures / Quilting stuff. Due the quilting attribution, the assumption was it was my mom's junk. This box was packed in Northern CA in 1996 and moved to WA, then to FL in 2003, then to AZ in 2010, and now to UT in 2019, having never been opened along the way.




Last night I decided to open it up and see what was in it. Right off the top, it was obvious the contents came from my dad's side of the family instead. On the top were some old greeting cards between his parents and grandparents. There were my grandmother's report cards and applications as she studied to be a teacher in the 1920s. Then there were my great-grandmother's teaching certificates for various levels dated 1898-~1910. Then some fabrics and an old fur (beaver?).
 
At this point I noticed a little leather pouch in a corner and pulled it out. First things to come out of this pouch are old Safeway envelopes from my ancestor's European trip ca. 1960 labeled France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Sweden, and Norway. Inside were coins and a few banknotes they saved as souvenirs.




At the bottom of this pouch was another, small, and much older leather pouch. In opening this up, I poured out a few more coins. A few 1920s/30s Commemorative Halves were first seen as they were the largest. An 1886 V Nickle. An 1863 Indian cent. An 1855 Dime. Then I spotted something of unusual size! An 1875 S 20 Cent. Woah! I've always kinda wanted one of these as a curiosity, but since it wasn't at the heart of my collection, I couldn't ever justify the money to adopt one. So to find one in a "box of my mom's junk" that was really my dad's families stuff... just WOW!




Once I got over the thrill of the find so far, I find the old pouch has another compartment. I looked in there and see a couple of old folded notes.




Opening them up, there is a $100 Confederate (facsimile per the serial) and a Bank of Omaha $1 obsolete currency note. When this thrill settled, I looked in the hidden pouch again and there was a little something hiding in the bottom corner. An 1859 California Gold 1/4 Token.





I called my dad to let him know this box's contents where very different than he had assumed. He had no recollection any of these items existed, from his parent's and grandparent's documents to a small coin collection. My grandmother brought this stuff up from So Cal when she was aging and moved into our house in the Bay Area in the mid-1980s, and it was just set in the garage unknown and forgotten. These ancestors settled in the Pasa Robles, Santa Barbra, Fillmore areas north of Los Angeles as farmers and teachers in the later 19th century, with my great-grandmother's line coming from mid-19th century Kentucky (Maybe explaining the two notes hiding in this?). We presume these coins were pocket change finds for someone back then kept in the old leather pouch that was somehow passed down to my grandmother and packed at the bottom of the larger pouch when she consolidated the collection with her European trip souvenirs.

Several moves later and I discover some incredible keepsakes; as if my ancestors knew how to make my day! Anyways, I'm still nowhere close to being a millionaire, but I rather feel as one today!

Thanks for reading!