Cool Gritty. I never knew you had been in the auction biz.
At one estate auction I called many years ago we had two rings going, the good auctioneers were selling the household and furniture while I was stuck selling the contents of several barns and sheds on the property.
We were running teams of two auctioneers so that we could go non-stop for the 9+ hours it was going to take. When I was on break and working the table, we were selling bins, buckets, old drawers and other containers full of nuts, bolts, old nails, small parts and such. They were bringing a couple bucks each up to around 10 bucks on better boxes.
I had grabbed an old dresser drawer full of nails and tack. A lot of it was in old medicine bottles, tiny paper sacks and snuff cans. I was sorta parting through it just out of habit, looking for any goodies I could call out that might make it bring more. One of the small metal snuff cans was super heavy. I asked my help who had helped me set up the auction what was in it. He just shrugged and said "I have no idea, I couldn't get it open, probably lead fishing sinkers".
I figured he was right, but put the lid of the snuff can against the edge of the table and hit it a couple of times with my hand until I pried the lid off.....
It was crammed full of $20.00 gold pieces!
I went up to the house and showed the heir to the estate what we found, he just shruged and said to sell them too. So we made an announcement they were just found and would be sold at a certain time that afternoon, made a few quick calls to known local coin buyers and sold them.
The first one brought over $4,000.00!!! They sold from around 700 to over 4,000 bucks each. If I hadn't opened that tin someone would have bought the whole box for under $20.00.
I wonder what they would be worth in today's market?
