Dawn Bunting, owner of the Maryland business Bunting Online Auction house recently found $61,000 stuffed inside an old Folgers coffee can.
Bunting said the original owner of the items and box of trains was a collector of coins and currently and had apparently died recently.
“The box of trains and train parts had sat in the corner of our warehouse for about one month until one employee had a chance to look into the items, they started to take the trains out to group and put in one of our weekly auctions when he thought there might be trains under what looked like paper stuffing in the coffee can. The paper stuffing was instead bank envelopes containing one hundred dollar bills.”
Bunting said “We think he was a person whose parents had lived through the Great Depression and didn’t trust banks. We have no way of knowing if that’s true, it’s just our best guess.” as to why there was so much cash stuffed in the can.
Bunting said when they called the consignor and told her that they had found something in one of the boxes and that she needed to go to the auction house. They didn’t tell her what it was, only that it was nothing bad or illegal so she wouldn’t worry.
“When she came, we had it in this bag and we just sort of dumped it out, and she was shocked. She was pretty speechless,” Bunting said.
“I didn’t want anyone to know that we had that sort of cash here until it was safely in her hands. Our employees had all agreed to keep it quiet until it left the building.”
“It was unnerving to have that amount of cash here. She came to pick it up and was speechless. They had no idea that there might be money squirreled away in the boxes, she was shocked. She did let me keep the coffee can as a memento!”
Bunting Online Auctions holds a bidding every Thursday at 7:00 p.m., which is full of all sorts of hidden treasures!
The cash was returned to the cosigner of the box train sets. Bunting plans to showcase the find in an upcoming series.
All photos are courtesy of Dawn Bunting and Bunting Online Auctions.
