Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Found Money

I don't remember if I mentioned the rings we found - the quick story is that we bought a boxlot of books at an auction, and I really only wanted 2 of the books out of 3 boxes we had to take. So I was going through the boxes, figuring out which I could sell online, and found a book safe - you know, someone had cut the inside pages out and put a little safe in there. We opened it up and found a little flannel bag - dh gave it to me and said, "It's empty" - but there was a diamond ring and a pearl ring in there.

We contacted the auction house, but he said, "All sales are final, congratulations." So we had two rings. BUT - no money to get them appraised, so they sat for a few weeks.

Sunday, there was an ad in the paper that there would be estate buyers at a local hotel conference center, and they would appraise and buy jewelry, silver, etc. We went over there last night and the guy confirmed it was a diamond, although an old, undesirable cut.

Long story short, we got $42 for both rings. The diamond was under a carat, and couldn't be recut (it was a "miners' cut" - flat bottom, didn't show the brilliance of the diamond, etc). Now, I'm not sure whether we were screwed on that or not, but it paid for what I spent at that auction, at least, so I'm content. Hopefully I will not find out later that it was worth a few thousand. :)

I'm not adding it to our BEF at the moment, though, because I had to borrow from our sinking funds to get through the month - it's going back in there.

Would have been nice if it was $10,o00...but $42 will work. I guess. ;)

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