Attic Cache or Unsafe Stash
By By Roger Dale Miller
From page 24 of the August 2002 issue of Lost Treasure magazine.
Copyright © 2002, 2002 Lost Treasure, Inc.
As a treasure hunter since the age of 14, I am more accustomed to finding treasure, not losing it. But over the years that is exactly what happened, and I’ll bet it has also happened to many others.
I have sought out and collected the autographs of many famous people over the years. In the early 1960’s, I put back silver coins I found in everyday change. I collected baseball cards and for some reason I only kept the major stars. The common cards went into the trash, which on my part turned out to be a stupid mistake. Today even the common cards are valuable because it seems all the other card collectors were doing the same thing. There are becoming less and less common cards from the 1950’s and 1960’s.
In my bedroom in the attic, I stored away arrowheads that I found in creek beds. I put them in cigar boxes and slid them under the bed, under loose floor boards as well as in the attic rafters. I dropped them behind unfinished attic walls that only went halfway to the ceiling. I wanted to keep them from being taken by my younger brother and sisters who would take them to school for show and tell.
Little did I realize I was actually hiding them from myself. Not only arrowheads went into my hoard. When I accumulated a handful of silver coins and wheat pennies I would usually put them in an old sock. Then I would tie both ends into a hard knot and drop the sock behind attic walls. I always figured I could take a piece of rope and some form of hook on the end and fish out the coins whenever I wanted. It was a bad mistake. The rope and hook trick would work nine out of 10 times, but I never realized it would take so much patience and time to retrieve my silver treasure.
Like real fishing in a lake, I often gave up after 15 or 20 minutes if I failed to catch something. I would throw my rope down in disgust and head down the stairs. To make matters worse and, on more than one occasion, I would catch the sock on the end of an exposed nail as I was pulling it up. I could hear the ripping sound as the sock tore and my coins spilled and rolled under the floor boards.
For all intent and purposes, the coins were gone forever. I would have to tear up the entire floor to retrieve all of them. That would cost more than the value of the lost treasure, even if my father agreed to the idea. Being 14-years-old and more than a little wise in grown-up thinking, I thought it best not to even bring up the subject.
As I grew up and hit the age of 19, my treasure hunting fever intensified. In 1965, I spent $70 on a metal detector, which was a lot of money in those days. The detector had only basic control knobs such as high and low volume, on and off switches, etc. The machines were in their infancy and they could not tell the difference between a bottle cap and a quarter.
I had about a 20% success rate, which meant I found coins, rings and other jewelry about two out of 10 tries. The rest of the time I found rusty nails and infamous bottle caps. Being a lot older now, you would think I would know better. I still wanted to hide my small treasures somewhere in the attic. After trips to old ballparks, abandoned church grounds, old home places and other locations, I would slip coins into the oddest places I could find. I even taped them to the bottom of my dresser drawer, under my work desk and behind a mirror. I thought that later I would find a better hiding place, but it seems I never could.
After a short stint in the Army, I suddenly lost interest in treasure hunting. Too much trouble, I thought, for my meager findings. Over time I simply forgot the locations of my many hidden treasures in the attic.
In December 1973 tragedy struck. One night the house burned down and my sleeping father was trapped upstairs as the flames leaped from the first floor to the stairway, trapping him. Through blinding smoke he did manage to break out an upstairs window and drop about 15 feet to the ground. But it was too late. Burned over 70 percent of his body, he died a few days later in the hospital. Several days later, while going through the rubble, I did find several coins and rings. Some arrowheads were still in good shape, but many others were broken and badly damaged. And, of course, old movie posters, Life magazines, Confederate paper money, autographs and other paper items were gone forever.
It took losing my attic treasure to get me interested in treasure hunting again. I started over, intent in being a lot smarter about hiding my treasures. Today, the most valuable items reside in a safe deposit box at the bank. On the other hand, old habits are sometimes hard to break. Recently I found a pint jar full of silver dimes tucked away at the bottom of a closet. I guess this old treasure hunter will never change. Change, as in silver coins and lost treasure.
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