You move into your new home. You’re excited. The walls are yours now, the garden’s yours, the weird cupboard under the stairs is yours. And then you find it. A jar of pickled seafood shoved under the sink. Not one, but eight full-size Christmas trees crammed into the attic. But then, a bar of silver tucked behind the toilet, like loose change…
It’s not unknown for previous owners leave behind fragments of their lives when they move house. Some intentional. Most accidental. But all revealing…
What Gets Left Behind Tells You Who They Were
One homeowner in Phoenix, Arizona discovered $23,000 in cash hidden in a metal box inside a basement wall. The previous owner didn’t trust banks after the Great Depression.
Another in Toronto, Canada found nearly $7,000 stuffed inside a yellow Home Hardware bag, rolled tight with elastic bands marked with dates from the mid-1960s to the 1970s.
Money hidden in walls isn’t just a sign of paranoia—it’s a window into history
These people lived through economic collapses. They watched institutions fail. So they built their own secret stashes inside their own homes to try and protect their nest-eggs.
Sometimes What’s Left Behind Is Worth Millions
One lucky family in upstate New York even found a small Fabergé figurine in their attic—a gift from Russian Czar Nicolas II to his wife. Initial valuation: $800,000. Actual auction price: $5.2 million!
Another homeowner in Shropshire, England discovered a first edition copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, autographed by the author, whilst renovating.
The Dark Stuff Gets Left Behind Too
But it’s not all glitzy multimillion dollar collectibles though. A neighbour in Batley, West Yorkshire, UK found a mummified head of a WWI Turkish soldier in the roof space. Bullet hole in the forehead. The previous owner, who brought it back from the war even built it a velvet-lined storage box for the object.
One homeowner’s sister in Salt Lake City, Utah found a cardboard box labelled “Cremated Remains” underneath a pile of household rubbish behind a wall. It was the widow’s husband!
What’s In It For You..?!
If you decide to buy a house that’s had previous owners, there there’s always going to be some type of history – for most of us, it might just be the odd piece of mail arriving every now, but for some, it’s the residue of someone else’s decisions. Their paranoia. Their collections. Their unfinished business.
In those houses, you’re not just buying walls and a roof. You’re inheriting secrets from someone else’s past.
Eventually you’ll move house sometime and might end up leaving things behind too. The question is what those things will say about how you lived…?
Want To Get Even Darker..?
Suppose you weren’t moving house, but instead, it was your job to sell dead people’s things. Dive into the weird world of selling the possessions of the deceased as told by Duane Scott Cerny…
Selling Dead People’s Things is a wry behind-the-curtain peek into the world of antiques and their obsessive owners—while still alive and after their passing. An amusing observer of the human condition, author Duane Scott Cerny entertains in illuminating, scary, sad, or frightfully funny resale tales and essays. Whether processing the estate of a hoarding beekeeper, disassembling the retro remains of an infamous haunted hospital, or conducting an impromptu appraisal during a shiva gone disturbingly wrong, every day is a twisted treasure hunt for this 21st-century antiques dealer.
While digging deep into the basements, attics, and souls of the most interesting collectors imaginable, traveling from one odd house call to the curious next, resale predicaments will confound your every turn. Be careful where you step, watch what you touch, and gird your heart—Antiques Roadshow, this ain’t!
