https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...s/ar-AAZBHHmRich Gilson planned to work on renovations outside his house.
Gilson and his wife, Suzanne, purchased a house in Wildwood, New Jersey, about four years ago, and they have been working on additions and renovations.
On July 8, Gilson, 60, who works in home inspections and renovations, started on the driveway in front of the home's garage.
"So I start digging. I'm hitting concrete. I'm hitting rock. I'm hitting glass," Gilson told USA TODAY. Then he found "these two things, and they look like root balls."
"I throw them in the soil pile," he said, "both of them, thinking they're just roots."
That Sunday, he came across another one of the cylindrical objects.
"I pick it up, and I'm thinking what is this? Why are these things following me, right?" he said. "I look at the edge, and I think I can see something there. It looked like paper. So I started tugging at the edge, and I knew immediately what it was. I thought, 'This is money.'"
The money was wrapped in brown paper, NJ Advance Media reported.
Gilson and his wife pulled the cylinder apart, and it amounted to rolls of $10 and $20 bills, totaling $1,000. They noticed that all of the dates on the bills were the same, the cash dating back to 1934.
At that time, $1,000 would have been the equivalent of more than $22,000 today, accounting for inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"So I start to think, OK, either somebody robbed a bank because all these bills came from the same lot," Gilson said, or someone may have taken their money out of a bank during the Great Depression.
That's not the only object Gilson discovered outside the house. Tuesday, he and a man he was working with spotted a roll of what could be more money, though he left the object rolled up.
Regardless of his discoveries, Gilson told USA TODAY, he isn't going to spend the money or try to sell it.
"It's a great story," he says, "and if I start to tell a story and somebody says, 'Can I see it?' and I say, 'Well, I bought a hoagie with it,' that seems silly."
Gilson said he's curious about the money, where it came from and whether someone simply forgot about it.
He hopes people who learn of his discovery don't come looking for more of the money.
"Please don't come to my house with a shovel," Gilson said. "I'm trying to finish the house, not make more work for myself."
Posted 07/11/2022 9:33 pm
