nerdish treasure
i found 3 working commodore 64's - one in its original packaging (all 1983 editions), about 400 cassette games, a '1541 diskette drive', a thermal printer, a mercury joystick (fucking weird thing that it is), a 9600 baud modem (buggered if i know how they got that with it), an atari 2600 and about 40 games for it. apparently there's another, older atari in the garage somewhere, which might actually be worth something...


as you can tell, my family and i are geeks.
( nowhere.elysium Exploder of cats, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 14:04, Reply)

i used to collect antique cameras
and bought a bulk amount (more than 50), from a dealer in Islington, 1985.
Quite a few had rolls of film in them, exposed.
The colour films would be stuffed, too long in the camera, 25 years or more probably, but one black and white 120 roll film developed ok.
I had the negs contact printed and 6 pics came out ok, a guy and a woman, late twenties, on holiday in Spain or possibly Tunisia (there was donkey in one pic. To me donkeys= Spain or Tunisia), and judging by the bloke's pants and the chick's almost polo neck swimsuit, i would say they were taken some time in the late 50's or early 60's.
A honeymoon that ended in disaster? An illicit overseas fling?
I wondered why that film never got developed before I got my hands on it.
(Man in Japan, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 13:49, Reply)

Photographs
When we moved into our student house a few years ago, we found a box in a cupboard which contained an old pair of bikini bottoms, a 'Red Nose Day' charity casette tape, and about 30 photos of fully-clothed young children.

We arranged the photos all around mate's bedroom, including on bed, under pillow, in underwear drawer etc.
(yiddo, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 13:37, Reply)

oh found treasure....... yes...
That story about the grenades sparked a few brain cells… I used to be a bit of a gun nut (still am strange as is) anyway, a few years ago, I was rummaging around our uncles attic after he popped it… opened this old steel cupboard and found a perfectly wrapped up (in its original packaging), sten gun, circa WW2. Along with 5 boxes of ammo, a cleaning kit, and another locked box. All mint clean, and looked brand new.

Uncle was in the Army, and was allowed to keep such things at home, and he had obviously either forgot about it, or never told anybody… I asked my aunt if she new anything about (cough) “old gun parts” in the attic, and the locked box..

No, she said, but could I remove them for her? Could I? Do bears….. Anyway… took the lot home, and pondered… what do I want with an original WW2 mint condition machine gun? Can I flog it? DARE I flog it? Does eBay allow these things? Nah… silly get that I was, I took the lot around to the local barracks and handed it over to the armourer. To say he was happy was an understatement… (They get like that with these things apparently…) anyway, its now in the regimental museum, pride of place on the ww2 section, with a little plaque engraved with my uncles name & rank..

Now.. The locked box…. (Just making sure you are awake) never found the key, so I had to take it to a locksmith to open it for me… I warned him in advance, that it may contain some sort of ordinance, and to be careful… good job… One mint condition (good old uncle, always was a stickler for that) German Walther P38 pistol and box of ammo… now… that I kept… :-)
( TBL I posted this on, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 13:32, Reply)

nice helmet
When I was ickle we got a council grant to help us restore and move into a house in a tiny ghost-village in cumbria. In the loft we found a WWII helmet and gas mask, and, dug up in the garden, a nazi belt buckle. The helmet had a name in the hatband (helmetband?) which I forget and I always wondered if it was his wife who made him throw out his trophy...

The surrounding area was jampacked with treaure in the form of (very) old bottles, clay pipes and early railway/mining bits and pieces. Stevenson's Rocket used to run past our place you know, although the bastards in the next village along are the ones that got their name up in the London Transport Museum. bastards.

it was all fields in my day you know.

if you feel this post is too long, you shouldn't have read this far should you?
that's 5 mins you'll never see again. ta ta :)
(bloodyHassocks, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 13:30, Reply)

donkey safari
when i moved into my last student house, we went for a rummage in the basement. piles and piles of crap, but we found some ray-ban aviators, a load of cassette tapes (i forget what was on them) and a couple of videos, one of which was called donkey safari. we thought ace, some bona fide animal smut, this will be hilarious! imagine our disappointment when it turned out to be 3 hours or so of donkeys on the plains of africa, viewed from a very safe distance through a zoom lens. still it was good to sit and watch hungover as one of my friends found out. the other video was a long boring guided tour through some part of africa that some guy presumably made to persuade some friends to come and visit him. i hope it didn't work, it looked shit and the guy narrating sounded like a right bellend
(no1_cheesecake, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:55, Reply)

Yesterday I went to look at Tinium's new house
He hasn't moved in yet and I was upset to find the loft empty. I did however find a revolting pair of tights up the bedroom chimney, a TSB (how old is THAT) chequebook above a ceiling and, after lifting the boards out of the roof of a cupboard, a Mathmos lava lamp.

I don't think I have ever spent the night in a travelodge without finding pron somewhere.

Ah, pron, is there nothing it can't do?
( Lord Manley of Ven www.justgiving.com/manley - please?, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:38, Reply)

One more...
My sister bought a house in Croydon recently (I really hate that town) anyway, it turns out that the previous owner (some old mad geezer) had died in there...

It was a bit of a fixer-upper place and they were working on the bathroom. The side panel of the bath fell off to reveal several large pouches of white powder carefully stashed away...

My sister, in her honesty took it all to the police...

The really gauling thing is that they keep getting letters from foreign banks saying, 'Dear Mr Deadguy, we've got a fat load of your cash... what do you want us to do with it?'

And before anyone says anything, I've checked... If they so much as reply to those letters they could be up for all sorts of criminal proceedings... Meh...
( Beastie is doing science with his arse, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:16, Reply)

Those aren't bandages!
I was about 12 years old when myself and a friend found a big stash of 'medical stuff' (they looked like bandages and stuff to us) which had been dumped (probably nicked and then dumped) on some waste ground.

We thought we'd found a really useful haul, so we transported the whole lot back to my house (I was lucky, my Raleigh Grifter had a luggage thingy on the back)

It wasn't until we got them home that my sister (10 years older than me) pointed out that those aren't really medical things (well... not how we saw them anyway) and that in fact 'Tampax' made stuff for women.

We still didn't know exactly what they were for, but nevertheless we lugged the whole lot back to the waste ground and dumped it...

Absolutely no apologies for lenght, girth, quantity or indeed frequency.
( Beastie is doing science with his arse, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:11, Reply)

In my loft.
I found an original copy of the Bible.

Which was nice.
(beatpig understands subliminalesbianmessagaying., Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:10, Reply)

Another one...
Was living in a flat in Tollcross, Edinburgh and a sizeable envelope emblazoned with Hearts FC logos arrived for a previous resident. Now I'm a Celtic fan but decided to open it anyway and, lo and behold, out pop two tickets for the Hearts vs Celtic game in a week's time (Hearts play at Tynecastle, 15 minutes walk from my flat). I noticed that the seats were in the Hearts area but thought it would be fine and called a pal to see if she fancied heading along with me.

Come the day we headed down to the ground, found the correct entrance and proceeded to look for our seats. Found the correct row, started edging our way along and noticed a small distance ahead that there were our seats, already occupied by two massive skinhead guys, seriously inbred looking tattoed nutjobs. We bottled it, continued along the row and just went past them, straight out of the grounds and into a boozer to watch the game, piss ourselves laughing and have many a G&T.

Celtic won anyway so we were happy :)
(pumpkinbug, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 12:10, Reply)

student lives
not me, but the friends of my girlfriends brother.

Went away from student house for the winter, got back in the new year, only there was a bad smell to the place. Checked all the usual things like bins, beds, bathroom etc... couldn't find the source of it.

About a month later one of the kids goes to the basement to investigate the possibility of storing more crap in the place, to find, at the back, in a corner, under a blanket a very, very rotton corpse.

Police said that it was a homeless man that broke in during the winter and promptly copped it.

Glad I didn't find that treasure.
(nit, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 11:44, Reply)

Script to Indiana Jones 4
On a train from Brighton to London I put my bag on the rack, and found a plastic file binder.
When I opened it the front page read "Indiana Jones 4". It was the whole script to a new Indiana Jones film. I couldn't have been more excited if I had found the holy grail.
I didn't know what to do with it so I took it to Dreamworks (once I'd photocopied it), and they gave me ten DVDs as a reward, promising they would return it to Steven Spielberg.
As it turned out the script had already been rejected and googling one of the passages produced the whole thing on the internet, so my fantasies of being invited to take a cameo role and enjoy an all expenses trip to the premier in Hollywood were not to be.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 11:32, Reply)

Home Sweet Home
My sister bought her first terraced house quite cheap, and on moving in roped me in to help out her husband with general DIY stuff.

On pulling up the hall carpet, we found a rather large pool of dried blood underneath and matching stain on the bottom of the carpet.

Turns out the previous occupant had been stabbed to death in the hall by his girlfriend.

So if you're living at 13 May Road in Lowestoft and reading this ... BEWARE THE GHOST!
(antonye, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 11:13, Reply)

definately not treasure......
Whilst enjoying a night of sex with my now bitch ex something felt different inside. Couldn't quite put my finger on what it was but it didn't feel normal, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a condom jammed up inside.
Funny that since we didn't use them and she'd been out the night before "having a girlie night at her mates house"... the excuses I got were great!
(Manatee Fondler, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 11:09, Reply)

I used to have a hamster. When it died, I was very sad, but life had to go on, and my parents needed to go shopping and get some petrol. We stopped off for the petrol, and what should my aunt find but a £5 on the floor! She gave it to me saying that I can buy another hamster with it.
Next day, came home with 2 female russian hamsters. Was told by the 'lovely' people at PetsAtHome that they are "both female, and both are not pregnant, but if they do get pregnant, come here with the babies, and we will buy them off of you".

Turn out that not only were they male and female, but the female was already pregnant. Ended up with 54 hamsters, in about 20 cages. My mum had to move her bed into my bedroom because the cages took up her bedroom.

The icing on the cake was when we went back to PetsAtHome: "Sorry, we already have a supplier, we cannot buy your hamsters from you".

Net Result:

Treaure Won: £5
Lost: £350 in cages, food, and sawdust.
( OneSullenBrit *air sandwiches*, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 10:42, Reply)

"I won it in an Argos Prize Giveaway"
Found a wallet when I was about 15...it was on the floor not far from my house...opened it up and it had about £500 in £20's...feeling flushed with cash and cos I really needed a shit, I ran home. Told my mum I'd found a wallet with some money in...unfortunately, instead of congratulating me and asking for a cut of the cash, she made me ring up the owner, who had conveniently, the cunt, left his contact details in it.

Anyway, he is very chuffed to hear I'd found his wallet, and he said he'd come round to collect it forthwith. Luckily for me, my mum had gone out, and so I removed all the money from the wallet, and gave it to him empty, save for his credit cards.

"Was there much in it?" I enquired...

"a few hundred quid" he replied looking a bit crestfallen.

"Thats a shame" I mused..."still, at least you got your credit cards"

With that, he thanked me, and gave me a £50 reward for returning his wallet, which was nice of him. Best tresure I've found ever.

and my mum never found out. Sorry mum.

The £550 went on a new bike, a Raleigh Mustang, told my mum I'd won it in an Argos Prize giveaway...I still have that bike, and often sit there, looking at its rusty outline, remembering that fateful day when I robbed some guy of his hard earned £550...
(Big Andy, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 10:22, Reply)

finders, keepers, losers, weepers
I used to do a lot of work for mobile dj's (repairs, designs, etc.). Anyway, once upon a saturday afternoon I was given an amplifier to repair by the wife/girlfriend of one such chap - fuses blowing or something like that (I forget). Anyway, the wooden box that it came in was lined with sponge. And that sponge was lined with a big bag of white powder that somebody had been dipping into to keep themselves awake during the usual dull ceremony that is the wedding disco.

Obviously, I didin't want to get caught with several grams of charlie, so I called my friends over and we polished the lot off. Took 24 hours to get rid of it all between the three of us, so you can imagine how much was there!

The dj never mentioned the stuff, but I don't remember seeing the girl again. Made £40 on the repair, too!

I won't ever apologise for anything. Friends would never expect you to, enemies would never respect you for it.
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 10:05, Reply)

.
Here's some:

1) I was at a festival new years just gone and I had the sudden urge to smoke a spliff. Started to wonder who I knew that sold pot when I glanced down and found a brand new pouch of tobacco. Looked inside and found a pack of papers with bits of cardboard torn off. Realised what was going on, had a hunt around inside the pouch and found about 2 grams of fantastically filthy pot near the bottom. Score!

2) Sometimes I explore abandoned factories and the like with mates. Recently we found a pallet of Ribena in a freshly abandoned factory and I netted about 10 boxes with 24 bottles in each box. I'm drinking some now, it's rather nice. Last week I drank an entire box in one day and it turned my piss greyish-blue. Also explored an abandoned Tetley Tea factory the other week and found a box with over 6,500 Tetley premium tea bags. I sold 1,000 to my mum's work.

3) When I was young I helped my dad repair the back verandah of a vacant property. During smoke-o I went for an explore underneath and found a box with 1,000s of rusty coins. They were all 5 and 10c pieces amounting to about $30, but for a kid it was treasure indeed. I blew it all on sweets; ate a few, threw up, mum confiscated the rest. Easy come, easy go.

These happened to mates but they make me laugh:

1)Mate and his friend were on a working holiday in Britain with more 'holiday' action than 'work'. They were walking home one night after a few drinks without a penny left and the rent was due the next morning. My mate picked up a used nappy and threw it at his friend as a joke, friend skillfully dodged the fecal missile which proceeded to hit the ground and burst spewing out a wad of £100 notes. They scored about 500 quid.

2) Another friend found a full pouch of tobacco at a train station once. He didn't smoke but took it home for his housemates who did. They opened it up and inside was a pile of torn up paper and a note saying "sucked in cunt".
(Brundy, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 10:04, Reply)

Good deed!
A few weeks ago I found a mobile phone on the floor on my way back to work from lunch.

It was one of those swanky new motorola razor ones.

The story could end there, and I've got my treasure, but no - I did the right thing & found a "work" number on the phone & managed to contact the owner's employer & find a way of getting it back to her.

Oh no! I gave the treasure back, now this story doesn't count!

read on....

I wasn't expecting a reward. If I'd wanted ill-gotten treasure, I'd have sold the phone on Ebay or something, but she gave me £20 to say thankyou, which was very nice of her, and I still ended up with some treasure! Woo!
(Soupy Twist BEST BEFORE:, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 9:57, Reply)

Treasure or theft?
Previous tenants at a building I manage left, so I sold 120 Herman Miller Aeron chairs and desks for them. They seemed happy with £200 each when I'd managed to get £350.

Found a huge stash of porn when younger in a black bin liner under a bush. Kept the whole school in porn for a year.

Opened a wrongly delivered parcel to find it was 2000 embassy. Started smoking soon after.
( The Beast can't help looking at womens breasts on the tube, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 9:44, Reply)

while facing life imprisonment...
i found jesus. imagine that.
( mrwil, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 9:26, Reply)

a matchbox on the floor
opened it and there was £20 inside,

found a pack of ciggies, 10 ciggies in it and a nice half ounce of hash with a pack of rizla :D
( Plomien is Polish for flame, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 8:49, Reply)

not me but a bloke I know
was walking through the woods on the cavehill with his dog, it suddenly goes running off the rack into thick bushes, so he goes off after the dog.
and LO! what a nice little treasure trove the dog has found, 4 nine bars of hash and a bundle of cash, easily more than a grand
and what does he do with it?

what does the dumb fucker go and do?

he only hands it in to the frickin cops!

:(
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 8:45, Reply)

Result!
A bag of Charlie on the floor of Walkabout one Saturday nite.
(Oops....did I say that out loud cos I really bloody want to., Fri 1 Jul 2005, 8:09, Reply)

Uncovered and reburied.
A friend once purchased an old station wagon from a much older original owner and brought it over to my place for the sort of cleanup and tinkering I enjoy doing on someone's new ride. While clearing out the years of accumulated dust and crud from the interior, I opened up the footwell vent box on the passenger side of the vehicle and found a thick envelope taped to the side of the box. Opening that up revealed several hundred dollars in assorted twenty and fifty dollar bills. Being honest sorts, we called up the prior owner of the vehicle and were told, "well, it was for emergencies involving the car so I guess it's part of the car: enjoy it." We certainly did: taking care of registration, inspections, plates and a full tuneup without spending any more of my friend's money was especially pleasant - and the last time I visited him he was still using that spiffy old wagon.


On the Upcountry Maui farm property I lived on for many years, we noticed a section of the land where the ground boomed if you walked on it with a heavy tread. After some impromptu soundings to determine the general dimensions, we hired some acoustic analyzers from O'ahu and determined the most likely place to dig for an entrance. We hit paydirt on our first excavation: a shielded entranceway to a twelve hundred square foot plus fallout shelter which we assumed was built during the Duck and Cover era of the Fifties. We called the prior two owners of the land and they said they had no idea it was there. As the owner before that was long dead, we concluded he was responsible for the heavy duty construction work. We cleaned it up and ran electric power and some basic plumbing to it, then effectively sealed it back up again: there really was not much else we could think to do with it as we had several perfectly good houses scattered across the property and were not inclined to rent out a cave to someone else.

I just realized we didn't tell Haku about the shelter when we sold the property to her: I guess that little bit of treasure has been successfully reburied.


Several months after my father had died and we had finished all the details of his passing, I returned to the islands to spend some quality time with my mother. During an episode where we cleared out dad's closet space, mom said I was welcome to the old training revolvers (we used blanks on hikes with the setters to acclimate them to gunshots for those unfamiliar with the practice) and his favorite shotgun. As we folded up his shirts and pants to donate to a local charity, mom handed me his overstuffed tie rack (nothing but high quality thin silk ties: my dad's formal fashions would do a rude boy proud) and a box filled with his various money belts saying, "he traveled with you the most: I think he would like you to have these. And if you find some money in them, so much the better." Five belts, seven hundred dollars. Thanks, dad.
( Felis Concolor, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 8:03, Reply)

Hunt the Jobbie.
Not me thankfully, and a very loose interpretation of the word treasure. At uni some degenerates who i was privelidged to call friends used to play a game in their flat called 'Hunt the Jobbie'. Every week or so someone would proudly announce that the 'Jobbie was set' and everybody would gingerly stick their hands in cupboards for the next day or so until it was located. One memorable time the jobbie remained hidden for well over a week, it slowly faded from memory....
That is until, one day, somebody was making toast and they noticed the odd color lurking beneath the easily spreadable butter.
(Cousin Walter., Fri 1 Jul 2005, 7:18, Reply)

Squirrels and fridges
Double bill here...

Taking the Y5/6s from our School on a residential. The instructor is talking about how the centre is a "green" centre and about recycling. "What can we do with rubbish when we have finished with it?" he asks, hoping for the answer "recycle it" or at least "send it to a dump."
One young boy who lives in a caravan powered by a generator off in the woods declares "Yer bury it!"
The instructor, taken aback, says "Well that doesn't solve the problem. The litter is still there then."
"Well my Dad put all our rubbish in a fridge an' buried it last week."
A long silence ensued during which the instructor looked desperately at myself and my colleague and we sadly nodded to confirm this was very likely.

My girlfriend's Mum teaches at the local high school. While clearing out the English office, they found a full mummified squirrel behind a filing cabinet. Spotting an opportunity, one teacher used its arm as a prop in his next English lesson on gothic horror.
(gibletwarrior, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 6:34, Reply)

dead fox
was rummaging around in salvation army shop looking for nice old leather suitcases. found what i wanted, but a nice leather music case took my eye, so i grapped it as well.

took them to my brother to gloat as he wanted some and his wife opened the music case only to scream her tits off.
it was full of old fox stoles. teeth barred and everything. she never touched another leather case again.
(fushundchups taste better with vinegar, Fri 1 Jul 2005, 6:18, Reply)