When a Cleveland couple decided to renovate their home, the last thing they expected was to come out of the whole ordeal $23,000 richer.
As they shared in a post on Imgur, though, a foray into the previously untouched basement during their renovations yielded quite a handsome payout!
When they finally got down to the basement level to start doing their renovations, they peeled back old sheets of drywall to discover something unexpected.
First it was just writing on the wall—something they hadn’t found on the first level of their home, but that wasn’t such an odd a thing to find, at first.
Then, when they opened up the ceiling above the cinderblock wall, they spotted it: a small, tin suitcase tucked snugly between a beam and a water pipe above the wall where they were renovating.
The case was incredibly light, so they didn’t think there was going to be anything particularly noteworthy inside, but curiosity won out, and they decided to open it up.
“I took the box outside and gathered the wife. It has something inside, but not heavy like coins or gold bars. Might get lucky though. Could be old sports cards,” the homeowner recalled.
To the couple’s amazement, though, it certainly wasn’t sports cards that had been hidden above the wall. Instead, there were three large stacks of money, each wrapped in wax paper.
The piles were accompanied by a newspaper from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, dated March 25, 1951. If the money found was any indication, it had been hidden in the wall since then; some of the bills had barely entered circulation when they were hidden away, apparently, and the entire lot was extremely rare to add to the value of the cash—which added up to around $23,000!
“Some of the bills were rarer than others. Some brown notes, a gold certificate and some star notes nearly uncirculated. All bills were from 1928-1934,” wrote the user.
The couple opted to bring the money in to be appraised but have plans to use whatever they found to go towards paying off their mortgage. All in all, they’re thrilled to have the cash—but more than that, they were excited to share a pretty exciting story with the world.
“This was a wild ride for us and I hope you all enjoyed it too,” they explained.
It’s not the first time that an old house has yielded some seriously impressive discoveries. Entire blogs have dedicated themselves to helping people find all of the hiding spots that families invented during the Great Depression and the World Wars, and people who buy homes from long-past eras sometimes come across some pretty nifty treasures.
For this family, though, their discovery was definitely more than just interesting—it likely helped them feel some serious financial relief, to boot!
