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Lost & Found - who gets the booty???

Leo
Leo Member Posts: 770
I have never found anything like this on a job. Found a ten once at the gas pump and gave it to the manager. Got a free coffee. Now if the manager kept it so be it. In the case of someone else's house it's their house period. It matters not what some obscure law says it is a home owned by someone else. I will be and have been called a lot of things in my life but a crook isn't one of them.

Leo

Comments

  • Ever find a valuable item - cash or bobble - on jobs?

    We always turn over anything we find to the property owners! Evidently that's not the case here.

    http://blog.cleveland.com/pdworld/2007/12/he_found_182000_in_her_bathroo.html

    What kinds of treasures have you uncovered while working?
  • Mark Hunt_3
    Mark Hunt_3 Member Posts: 184
    Saw that


    on the news this morning. This will get real messy before it's over.

    "What kinds of treasures have you uncovered while working?"

    Unless you consider dead birds, squirrels, raccoons, snakes, mice, rats and the occasional clothing item "treasure"....I found nothing of monetary value.

    Came across a pistol that was hidden in the mechanical room of a family outreach center. Gave it to the police and it turned out to have been used in a murder.

    Mark H
  • mtfallsmikey
    mtfallsmikey Member Posts: 765
    I've found everything from

    A petrified dog to Confederate / Union Civil War stuff. I have a picture of a 1923 Durant that was parked in front of the dealership, HO let me have it.
  • Supply House Rick
    Supply House Rick Member Posts: 1,404
    Found

    Old Genesee Beer cans, thank God they were empty...
  • Fred Rappuhn
    Fred Rappuhn Member Posts: 107
    a side story

    On a side note: Local farmer leasing land to farm discovers tw0 monster state record bucks, dead with horns locked togethier. Must have died in battle. Farmer leasing land claims, land owner enters the picture and he claims, outdoors hunting tv programs swarm all over this for coverage. State DNR steps in and claims they own the carcausses, unlawful posession of deer out of season. By this time the farmer that leased the land has shoulder mounts done with horns locked.
    State police raids the farm for the mounts, Surprise, Surprise, some one broke in to the farmers house and stole the mounts, was the story, he asked police to make a report while they were there.
    The mounts have never been seen since, they probly are looking real nice over someone's fireplace in northern Michigan right now.
  • ScottMP
    ScottMP Member Posts: 5,884
    My favorite

    was a small bore bird shot gun. Right next to it was a pickle jar full of silver dollars. The woman had just takenover her dead fathers house. I made sure I left them were she could find as they where hidden over the sheetrock over the boiler. I was there for three days and she never said a word. I finnaly asked and she said Oh yea I got that.

    I could have walked away it. Never got a thank you or a silver dollar.

    Hey at least I can sleep at night.

    Scott

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  • Chas_4
    Chas_4 Member Posts: 29
    Half Million

    Its a wonder there is even a question as to ownership. The law can certainly be confusing sometimes. When I bought my present home the crawlspace was full of electrical supplies left over from prior owners. One of the boxes had a pack of 70's baseball cards in it with a Pete Rose rookie card. Its worth a whopping five bucks. I never notified the previous owners and I can still sleep at night too.
  • scrook_2
    scrook_2 Member Posts: 610
    found bootie

    The daughter of someone I know found a not insignificant sum of cash a few years ago, in an unmarked envelope, among some goods she was straightening up at her after school job in a retail store at the mall. She turned it in to management, who turned it over to the local police dept. They held it for a year, then, as it went unclaimed, ownership reverted to her; so patience, honesty (and being in the right place at the right time) does sometimes pay.

    If one found something of potential value in a house (or commercial building) it seems the *right* thing would be to give it to the owner or occupant. If it was a truely disliked customer, though, you could just leave it there, maybe they'd never find it and the *next* owner might score instead.
  • jackchips_2
    jackchips_2 Member Posts: 1,338
    You get

    > was a small bore bird shot gun. Right next to it

    > was a pickle jar full of silver dollars. The

    > woman had just takenover her dead fathers house.

    > I made sure I left them were she could find as

    > they where hidden over the sheetrock over the

    > boiler. I was there for three days and she never

    > said a word. I finnaly asked and she said Oh yea

    > I got that.

    >

    > I could have walked away it. Never

    > got a thank you or a silver dollar.

    >

    > Hey at

    > least I can sleep at night.

    >

    > Scott

    >

    > _A

    > HREF="http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=

    > 237&Step=30"_To Learn More About This

    > Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in

    > "Find A Professional"_/A_



    something better than a silver dollar, Scott. Something you had before this little story.

    Our admiration and respect.

    :-)

    Jack
  • jackchips_2
    jackchips_2 Member Posts: 1,338
    You have

    something better than a silver dollar Scott. Something you had before telling this little story.

    Our admiration and respect.

    :-)

    Jack
  • SVDW
    SVDW Member Posts: 80


    I used to run a lot of air piping in manuf. plants & found lots of stuff over the years. Anything from pipe wrenches & tools left on top of joists to somebody's Penthouse stash & booze. Usually returned the tools to the maintenance guys & left the other stuff. I never regretted doing the right thing.
  • Joey B_2
    Joey B_2 Member Posts: 24


    When I was working in New Rochelle, my old mechanic was opening a wall to locate a pipe he was tracing and found a whole other room that the home owner didnt even know about
  • Tim_41
    Tim_41 Member Posts: 153
    Fathers level

    During a remodel job, I took some sheetrock off a wall and found a level with my fathers name on it. He dropped it down the cavity while doing cast iron work back in the early seventies. He would'nt let me have it.
  • Electrician

    My parents had an electrical problem & I referred a friend who had his own electrical business. I got a call from him asking if my Dad had a past he was keeping from us?!? He'd found a tuperware container full of old antique jewelry and several items from a picnic with Dad's name and a woman's name on them. Not my Mother's name, which had my friend pondering the situation.

    I hustled out to see what he'd found. It was quite a stash! Diamond rings, lots of gold and antique watches that had belonged to ancestors on both sides of the family. As for the "affair", I didn't know what to think.

    We decided my parents would have to sort it all out & Dad would have to defend the baubles with the lasses name on them.

    Turned out that they went on a long canoeing trip up in Algonquin Park some 30-years earlier and Mom was afraid to let her best jewelry in her dresser drawyer, so she hid the contents away in the basement ceiling. Only problem was - she completely forgot and upon returning was so convinced they'd been robbed, she called the police and filed a report!

    The electrician could have pocketed the haul and no one would have been the wiser. They offered him a nice reward, which he politely declined.

    I can't begin to imagine why the contractor in that story thinks he's entitled to squat. She offered him 10% and he's fighting for 40%? I know what my second offer to him would be(G).
  • martin
    martin Member Posts: 144
    Valuables

    Once doing a remodel at a retired doctors home,i was removing an old wall hung cast iron lav. Went to undo the s trap and there was a box about 6 " square jammed up in the cavityby the fauct supplies, this client was one that liked to stand about 4' behind you and observe the work. Well I took th box down it weighed about 20# he saw it and looked surprised and said I'll take that and scurried off with his stash that he must of forgot about. Must have been coins or some such item. On a differant note I was installing heat and plumbing in an old amish house, it had been sold to new owners. Moved a naily board to jump up in the crawl from the basement, turned back and theres about 20 rats, BIG RATS, big dead rats thank god.The family that had left the house had left a case of decon which was totally eaten. closest i ever came to purging myself on a job.
  • Wayco Wayne_2
    Wayco Wayne_2 Member Posts: 2,479
    I too

    found a gun up over a duct in a basement I was removing. It was stashed way out of reach wrapped in a cloth. It had an ivory handle and a broken firing pin. I tried to give it to the owner of the house, but she freaked out and wanted nothing to do with it. They had just moved in and it obviously wasnt theirs. My helper at the time's father was a gun collector. He took it to the police and later retrieved it after a time. It's now in his collection. Other than that I found a coke bottle cap from the mid 60's with the face of Washington Senators slugger Frank Howard on the inside. It was in an attic floor. I remember as a kid they had a collectors promotion with all the players on them. Not worth anything, but cool little time vault memory. WW

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  • I was doing bath remodel and had to open up outside wall. Part of the insulation used in the wall was an old newspaper with JFK assassination on front page...pretty cool find for a history buff like myself!
  • J.C.A._3
    J.C.A._3 Member Posts: 2,981
    My best find.....

    Was a "mini-bat" from Bat day at Fenway Park...from 1967.

    Imagine giving small bats away at a baseball game now-a-days? Can you say weapon???

    I also found the old style plastic soldiers, about 6" tall in the same duct....along with some long lost Monopoly pieces. Of course, the house was almost directly across the street from the old Parker Bros. factory, so no surprise there.

    One of the drivers from the old oil company I worked for was a town employee before a truck driver. He worked for the sewer dept. , and found an almost 3 carat diamond in a sewer manhole one day.After the specified 2 year wait...it was his. He cleaned and had it cut into an engagement ring...AND a wedding ring for his wife.(he didn't care for the "Emerald cut"!) Chris
  • Chas_4
    Chas_4 Member Posts: 29


    Shoot! Square Footage in New Roc city is worth a fortune. Did they offer a reward?
  • Al Corelli_2
    Al Corelli_2 Member Posts: 395
    Al Corelli, NY



    914-804-2234
  • Al Corelli_2
    Al Corelli_2 Member Posts: 395
    finds?

    Gutting an apartment in The Bronx, back in the 80's, I ripped the medicine cabinet and the bathroom wall down, only to see a CASCADE of empty crack vials. Thousands of them.

    The police raided the place upstairs the next day.

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    Al Corelli, NY



    914-804-2234
  • burnerman_2
    burnerman_2 Member Posts: 297
    nellie fox

    do u guys know who he was i was cleaning his widows furnace there was baseball bats on a spot near the ceiling she goes aw them nellie put them there after work also old coins on a job homeowner said they'd help pay for the install royboy
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