Our daughter just got home from deployment in the ME for a year. She got a job near Salt Lake and bought an old fixer house. We've been there the last couple days helping her with some work. She has a chain link fence on top of a 12" cement wall. There was an ugly bush growing right up against it that needed to go. It had maybe 40 or 50 stems coming up from the roots so I went to work with the chain saw to get it down to ground level. About 2/3 of the way through, I had sparks flying. I figured the bush wasn't that hard so I started trimming with the loppers to find out what I'd hit. I finally got down to a cast iron bathroom sink, upside down, and with the main stems of the bush growing around the drain. I kind of think it was put there 30 years ago to force the bush forward away from the fence. It wasn't nearly as attractive as it sounds. It was quite a job to cut the wood away from it and pry it out with a 4x4...after resharpening my saw.

That's one of the more unusual things I've found over the years in old houses. What have you found?

Was pulling baseboards off an old house and found a couple penny postcards from 1911. Took them to an antique dealer I knew and he told me they weren’t worth much ($5) because the corners on the stamps were ripped off.

Decided to try to find the family as they were mailed and received locally. Went to the city clerk’s office and explained what I was looking for. I knew the clerk, too. Turns out the addressee was her great, great aunt. I gave them to her.

5 miles of cable

As it should be, well done!

Absolute weirdest was a blow up doll with "her" arms handcuffed behind "her" back in a run down trailer we had to clear off a lot I bought.
Same trailer had about 30 microwaves stacked in a bedroom.

Bongs quite a few times. A flag with 48 stars (really cool).
An extremely old wheel chair that ran off bicycle like pedal and chain system I was told was post WWI.

Also found a complete copper pot still set up in a building on some mountain property we bought. It might still be around....somewhere....

Had a preservation crew helping us on a Wright Brothers job in West Dayton Ohio...

West Dayton is another white flight abandoned [bleep] northern city.

After work sometimes some of the out of town guys would snoop around the old abandoned (but beautiful architecture homes)... looking for 100 year old mantle pieces, doors etc.

About 10pm one night I got a phone call that they had found a very dead crackhead hooker.

I can probably find the newspaper article if I have to...

Some days it is royal PITA to be a boss.

That time I backed a loaded cement mixer into an old Victorian home's abandoned and forgotten brick septic tank. Damn near rolled the truck.

Closet full of assorted frederick's of Hollywood
type lingerie
Top shelf stacked with letters from a prison
inmate with terrible spelling- " I luv yoo so mooch
babee . Yoo r the onelee womun 4 me " etc.
Letters from wally world and a couple of law
enforcement agencies concerning bad checks.
Shoe box full of insulin syringes.
Closet floor with 2 big plastic tubs full of
assorted sex toys and several glitter g strings

I don't remember how many cans of lysol
spray I used

when I was a kid, newspapers from ww2 (Kingsville TX). Wished i'd of kept them.

We had a farmhouse on our place it was built about 1911 I think.

Found some pennies from the 19-teens, 3 or 4 V nickels and a Tin Type 3x5 of some young man, that was probably older than that house.

I have lost track of that tin type, several moves over the years.


We have a log cabin also that is still standing mostly, from the 1870-1880s. Never found anything in it.

Wasn't too long ago I read about (maybe it was here) some dude tore down a wall in his place to remodel, and found a fully auto Thompson complete with a few mags and ammo in a wall. That would be a nice find! I think he reported it and lost it to authorities though. Dumbass....

I remember being at the family farm and we were cleaning the house; I was probably 5 or 6 and my grandpa gave me a canteen that was stamped U.S. Property 1910.

Carried it for years and had a canvas WWII belt holder and a WWII belt along with a dual mag 1911 holster, also canvas.

Dont know where it ever went. It was probably stolen by the neighbor kids or a "friend" along the way.

Read a story on the S&W forum of a guy finding a Registered Magnum wrapped in an oily cloth inside the wall of an old place. That would be a win

My cousin and his buddy used to hike up to an old cabin that was half fallen in up in the hills where they live in NM. One day the took his buddy’s toddler brother with them in a backpack carrier and when they walked into the cabin the little fella started reaching and saying “gun, gun”. Sure enough jammed between the logs up in the corner of the cabin near the roof was a Remington 1858 percussion revolver. They’d been there 100 times and never noticed it.

Newspapers from the 1940s under an old floor. A few coins, but none valuable. 20lbs of birdseed from a pack rat. Lots of dead mice and wasp nests. Nothing good yet. I do a lot of remodels. I am always hoping to find something cool. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Oh...and lots of piss poor framing.

a lot of that post-war building was put up quick and dirty.

Pine plank deck roofing recycled from shipping crates, I’ve had to do some creative magic to some roofs 4,5,6 inches out of square

My grandfather remodeled a portion of the farmhouse that was built in 1904 and found a flintlock rifle in the plastered wall. My Uncle has it know.

Four circuits.
No apparent relationship to the eight rooms in the house.

The trouble with that is what can you do with it? If anyone catches you with it you're screwed and you can't register it. As much as I'd like to have one, it's a big liability without all the right paperwork.

Enough rat carcasses and snake skins to make your skin crawl. Pulled down a kitchen range vent in a rent house 15 years ago and an enormous snake skin fell out on my head. Must have been a big chicken snake or something. Fugging thing was slithering around right over Mama's head while she was stirring the chili.

Around here if they are old enough you will find termite damage more often than not.

I read about some people in NE somewhere who bought an old house. The siding was getting pretty bad so they tore it off to replace it. Under it they found that the house was made of 6x6 solid oak timbers in excellent condition. They didn't replace the siding.

Used to have an exclusive contract to do the flooring in motel 6 and their subsidiaries in the late 80s early 90s . Found things and genres I didn't know existed. My kid just today sent me pics of a .32 cal percussion cap mouse trap he found in his new farm . That one is interesting, and it still works. He loaded it and tripped it.

Used to have an exclusive contract to do the flooring in motel 6 and their subsidiaries in the late 80s early 90s . Found things and genres I didn't know existed. My kid just today sent me pics of a .32 cal percussion cap mouse trap he found in his new farm . That one is interesting, and it still works. He loaded it and tripped it.

Found these in an old house we were tearing down. They look like silver with a bad tarnish. Don't have a clue what they are.

Several bags of old silver coins. Helping a buddy rehab an older home that owners were forced to sell and go into assisted living. Was able to get them back to the previous owners.

Moved into the current house about 3 years ago. House was 16 years old. Cleaning up the attic space over the garage, making shelves and storing stuff, came across a photo album wrapped in two walmart bags and shoved under the flooring.....

Previous owners were fond of each other................. VERY fond of each other!!!

that happened to my brother as well. except the wood wasn't oak and the bottom course of logs was pretty shot. his quick rental remodel has turned into a multi year log cabin rehab. he has completely redone it and is finishing up the wiring, plumbing and drywall now. what a project.

Was doing a minor remodel on a river house we bought, and in the utility closet wall, there was an antique fly rod and reel. Probably from the 50's. Looked new.

I went in to an old house that several neighbors swore was haunted. Some story of disappearances years before and strange noises since then. One neighbor said she would see a light move though the electricity had been off for some time - whatever. I got in and checked out the dusty old place. I made my way into the single upstairs room with one of those slanted ceilings. I banged into the wall a second tme and it sounded hollow. When I pushed on the corner it vry slightly popped open as if it was meant to. I pulled and it opened it and heard the sound of a wind and there was a far away smell of something rotten. I heard movement and decided I imagined it. Stuck my head in and heard it again and thought I saw a feint, quick flicker of light. Like a pair of eyes . I worked up some nerve and started to crawl in when i realized those rumors were true. I can't write more because arghhhhh..

Stuff from the 50's is antique? Ouch!!!

Dang squirrels will pick some strange places to die, eh?

Reminds me of finding a blow up doll with a dead guy on top. Died of a heart attack. He was actually found by his daughter and she called it in.

Not a house but an old barn being torn down, a guy I know found a bag of gold coins from like 1860’s. Of course word of something like that really got around. Before he could get them appraised someone broke in and stole the safe he was keeping them in. The family was gone for just the evening on Christmas Eve. Someone was keeping an eye on it.
Before the coins were found it was local legend that Jesse James gang made their way through after the infamous Northfield Minnesota bank robbery. They did swap horses with a homesteader in the area according in their family history.

Dang. He wanted to go out with a bang.....

Guy I once worked with had some rental properties. One was getting re-habbed and he found a German Luger behind a sheet of plywood that was in a stairwell in lieu of drywall. Another guy was doing plumbing work in a rehab and found an old Ortgies ( sp?) German handgun up between the basement rafters at the top of the basement wall when he was running some pipe. Both guns got sold; the Ortgies was surprisingly good looking but not a real valuable piece. Never saw the Luger but I heard it wasn't all that bad and I don't recall how much he got for it.

Bought a home from the original owners that had gone into assisted living.

Went into the crawl space to inspect the furnace and duct work and found a Lazy Boy recliner and a few cases of unopened Coors from the early 2000s. Also a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines.

Stacked against the foundation walls were thousands of neatly organzized cans and bottles of Coors from the 70's, 80s, and 90's.

This was the guys escape room........

A friend of a friend was renovating the basement in his early 1950's build house and found a dirty old rifle in the floor joists covered by the ceiling. With the Canadian laws and fearful wives I ended up with the rifle as the closest person with a license.

Quick inspection showed a 1912 manufactured K98A in what looked like really bad shape. In the end the horrible looking bore was just a lot of oil and decades of dust, the very dark stock cleaned up very quickly with warm water and soap. It became a very fun rifle renovation and ended with my one son who is real history buff.

On my own I have found: lots of dead insects and rodents, early 1900s tack for farm horses.

We had an old log cabin on our farm built in the 1860’s. My grandfather stored glass jars and junk in it. All garbage! When I went looking for treasure I found it in the strangest place. The walls were covered with cardboard wallpaper. Underneath the cardboard was perfectly preserved 100+ year old Heart Pine Wood. Some had termite damage but it was still a pickup truck or more of good boards. Saved a few to have something built from it and sold the rest to a friend building a new house. We also have a couple of tables built from the beams that were salvaged from the cabin.

Not valuable but still interesting, I thought. When I was working in Real Estate, I got into a lot older homes to show them or just inspect them. I discovered that at one time, people used newspapers to insulate their attics. In a few homes, I found attics with maybe 3-4 inches of newspaper insulation, newspapers dating back to the 1920's and even earlier. These papers would crumble instantly to tiny flakes if you tried to pick them up, making the homes absolute fire traps, one spark would be all that's needed.

When I was still retired, hadn't returned to full time work again, my nephew and I got a job cleaning out a house after the decedents personal property had been auctioned off. The executor said we could have anything we found that we might want. Among some of the stuff we kept were eight wooden decoys from a noted regional carver. They were appraised at several hundred dollars each. In the green houses on the property we found several shed snakes skins over six feet long.

My late father was a golfer. One day, while looking for his lost ball in the woods at the golf course, he came across two canvas bank bags that were rotting away and contained almost two hundred silver dollars. Given the age and condition of the bags, they'd been there for years. Given their location along the side of the golf course, people must have passed within a few feet of them thousands of times.

I noticed that. I'm a 1940 model so had to smile at it.

BIL had a home he was renting, renter fell behind on rent several months, BIL went thru eviction process, renter refused to move out while still not paying rent so he had to get the deputy to evict. The renter just left, didn't pack anything from what I can tell so we had to go there and clean out the house.

I was maybe 14? at the time, and a country boy so I couldn't figure out why this guy had a collection of rubber dicks. BIL had to explain to me they were [bleep] and not to touch them. Not that I had much interest in taking home a box of rubber dicks to my house anyways.

I did get a great collection of albums. I was introduced to Bob Marley and Black Sabbath.

Rubber dick qwar listened to black sabbath?

Another gun from a rehab house story. Forgot to include it in my previous post. Old damascus barrel Ithaca 12 ga. double with external hammers. Barrels had been cut down but nowhere near illegal length. No stock; the stock had broken at the wrist and just wrapped in duct tape for sort of a pistol grip. Up in the basement rafters. I was reading gas & electric meters in my semi retirement and showed up and the plumbers & electricians who found it didn't want to put it in their company trucks so I took it off their hands & put it in my vehicle. It was trash with sewer pipe bores, broken springs for the hammers, etc. etc. Complete junk but it got me 50 bucks at one of those no questions asked gun buy backs.

Maybe his old lady liked Big Red in the pooper whenever the drum break in Iron Man kicked in

Bought a small 160 acre place, in 1963 that had a log trappers cabin on it, after we got settled in I decided to go look the cabin over part of the roof was caved in and the floor boards were rotted out, it had a stone fire place in one corner, there were copper pans, skillet, and a tea pot, in the fire place, and the other corner were the roof was still ok were wooden boxes, full of Dupont caps and prima cord and dyno -mite, I backed out real slow and called the Fire dept. talked to the fire chief, they came and put hazard no trespassing signs up up around it, and a couple of days later the bomb squad from Denver, came and spent almost a whole day cleaning the cabin out.
I still have the copper skillet pans and tea pot. we remodeled the cabin and made a bunk house for our help.
Rio7

Digging a garden in front of my son's house this spring I found pop top beer cans and a corroded 1973 penny.

In the northeast kingdom of VT my parents found newspapers lining the walls from 1865. full of civil war news. We framed some of them.

Just a wood chisel. I've been told by a man that helped build our place in Ontario that he, and cousin hung wine bottles to rattle in the hollow walls.

My late brother used to remodel houses all over the KC area. He found an old Remington M24 Short Only when remodeling an old house, stuck in a wall someplace. The owner didn't want it, so he took it home, and later gave it to me just before he passed away. I still have it. I bought a Winchester 61 from another feller who'd found it in another wall someplace or other. It's bore was completely gone, sadly enough, and I sold it for parts at a gunshow.

Bought a home built in 1926 for change. Didn't know if I was going to remodel or raze, but discovered the floor grates and door handles were bronze, and the inset window pulls were platinum. Sold the metals for $4,600.00 and then sold the house which turned out to be of historical value. The home was built and occupied by the Monnig family, of Department Store fame. The new owner remodeled and it became a law office.

Several years ago I knew a guy and his wife that moved into her grandmas house and when they were fixing it up they found a couple of rifles under the floor boards in the kitchen. Both were barreled actions, a Springfield 03 and a Mauser 93, bores were welded shut and rusty as heck, another friend of mine bought them from him.

Sometime 40 or so years ago..........
A feller and some boys he had hired to help tear down an old house in Portland, TN.
They found an old revolver in one of the interior walls.....The man gave the boys the revolver.
Boys sold the revolver to another feller, I saw the revolver, it was marked Co. D with a low three digit serial number.
Turner Kirkland said it looked to be original. Must of came up from Texas.

.

Remodeled an old house in Tesuque, NM (just north of Santa Fe).
Early portion evidently was put up in the late 1700's - nothing square. From 9 - 15 degrees out of square, depending on which addition you were in.
Sometime earlier, it had belonged to the publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican, and we found (best I can describe) light cardboard, embossed sheets
used to print newspapers. Dated late '30's and early '40's. They have since disappeared, after being given to my FIL. SIL and MIL probably threw them out, after he died.

Any pics of the house?

A 32 caliber break open revolver. A year after moving in my house, built in 1900, I was in a crawl space. It was laying in the dirt. It would open and close the cylinder would spin the hammer would cock but it wouldn't revolve or lock. I didn't even see a name on it. Basically a cheap Saturday Night Special.

I tossed it into a quarry, 100 foot deep water.

Too much water under that bridge...

Was there a lot lime in that crawlspace?

No, this whole damned hill is sand. I live on a ridge, which at one time before Erie receded would have been a sandbar then a beach. Dig in my ground and find pieces of sandstone worn off by water. On my lowest spot I've dug and found old shells about the size of my fingernail.

Of course Lake Erie is only 2-1/2 miles away from me.

I found an old chain mail type change purse with an 1858 flying eagle cent in it.

Jimmy Hoffa

😎

I found a walter payton rookie card but it was in a trailer, so I guess that doesn’t count

Wall full o' razor blades.

Behind the medicine cabinet when they used to have a slot for razor blade disposal?

I have never found anything of value in an old house, cabin, or barn. A friend of mine (who is gone now) was buying up farms in the late 50's and early 60's. If there were buildings on the place he would take a look in the attics and crawl spaces if they had one and if nothing was there he would doze it in a pile and burn it. One farm he bought had two Winchesters in it. A Model 12 12 ga. built in 1924 and a 1895 lever action in 30-40. They were in a closet in the living room of the farm house just leaned against the wall in plain site. He used the model 12 as a pheasant and duck gun for years.

Lots of old rubbers

Yes, and I've even seen those slots in fairly recently construction.

Not a find, but rather what we had to clean up. My uncle used to move mobile homes before he died. One Saturday, he took us to a mobile home he was to move and gave my cousins and I some cleaning supplies and told us to clean the “ketchup” off the floor. Ketchup my ass, it was blood as a husband had murdered his wife there and we cleaned up her blood. We didn’t know for quite a while what we actually had cleaned up that day. Probably couldn’t get away with that now. That was over 30 years ago.

My parents bought an old shack that we tore down and put a cabin on in Minnesota in 1979. There were whisky bottles stashed all over that house and the surrounding lot. One pile seemed to keep on until we were digging a couple of feet down in the dirt, so we finally quit digging. In one of the closets I found a stack of Walt Disney comics from 1950-1952. Probably about 15 of them. Not a whole lot of value, I think one was listed at about $600 the last time I had them appraised. I have kept them all these years, not sure what I'll do with them yet. Too bad that kid didn't like Marvel comics.

Under the house once owned by a short Italian immigrant that drove a Cadillac and owned strip malls, I found desiccated rats.

I got a Beretta 25acp from his descendants in the trust fund, for $175 in 2002.
They called 380s, "cannons" and would not own one because of recoil.