Finders, Keepers. Siilence IS Golden! Shut up!

[hollowpointred]

My feelings would have to be more on a case by case situation.

An abandoned house...no doubt my mouth would be sealed....definately finders keepers

But...that was a remodeling job at someones house. If it's in their house...I figure its their's.

If I found a box in someone's wall...I'd be curious as heck at what it was...but I'd let the owner...who was obviously there...know I found something. Who's to say the owner might not have put it there themselves.

Not so in this particular incident, but it could have been put there by her...and then if you said nothing...you'd be a thief.

Al

exactly. a contractor working in someone elses house has no right to something found in that house, period. ....." oh look i found this flat screen tv in your living room!" this guy was a greedy A-hole. that lady didnt have to offer him the 10% she offered. greed will destroy this country someday. everyone thinks they are owed something anymore.

Without going against your (by that I mean everyone's) opinion, one has to respect the views of those who are engaged in the business because, sometimes, experience is the best teacher. But there are circumstances where even those that are experienced will learn something new, since not everything is known.

Such a case could be this: you buy a house but it needs renovating. You have no concept of anything associated with the house as when you bought it the seller did not divulge any information other than what is required. You hire a renovator (usually called a contractor but in a reality a renovator who is contracted and who may hire others for services and supplies). Normally, the owner may not know a single thing about the house except that its innards need to be modernized so a lot of its interior is going to be replaced and the renovator is going to haul away the debris.

Now, the question is: "If while you, the renovator, is tearing down you find something of value that the new owner had no concept of, do you enrich the new owner by declaring what is found?

As it's been expressed, taking what is not yours is theft. Taking what doesn't "belong" to the new house buyer is... ? Or does a bill of sale for the house automatically give the new owner the right of ownership to whatever was left behind, unknown to the new owner? These might seem to be self-explanatory questions but there is a lot of possible legality to the answers.

This is the reason why I mentioned doing research into the laws that cover such circumstances to see how they were used and their results.

Silver Fox

i cant speak for anyone else, but the way i was raised... if its in someone elses house it doesn't belong to me. period. if i had found it, i would have told the owner and expected nothing in return. if they offered 10% i would have been delighted and thanked them for it. i wouldn't have to research the laws. i know in my heart whats right and whats wrong. its kind of the same way when you find a ring that can be traced back to the owner. the way i was raised, i would return the ring and expect nothing more... but that's me.

 

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[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Hollow pointred head? Frankly, I would expect no less from you my friend. Stay that way.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[G.I.B.]

The only people who 'won' here are the lawyers.

They took the largest cut, off the top.

 

[Ramapirate]

I think if you find a chunk of money in somebody elses house it probably belongs to them.
The situations I'm talking about are more the "ask permission to hunt someones property
and the owner agrees you can hunt and you find a nail keg full of $20 gold pieces" situation.
What I find is mine, period. I don't tell anybody, I get the loot and haul fanny. If I was given
permission to demolish and haul off a building, I find stacks of hundred dollar bills,
it gets hauled off with the trash and hastily put in one of my many "sneaky" places.
I know a dude that bought an office machine business from the family of a deceased owner back in
the 1970's. He found like $30,000 or $40,000 in the walls of the building that came with the
business. He kept it, and some of the people that found out about it always gave him crap
over it. I don't even think he had a moral much less legal obligation to give the money back
to the family. The way I looked at it, it was his business, his building, his money.
But, (I've mentioned this on here before but it's was pretty cool anyway) back in the late 1990's
my wife and I found a pocketbook sitting on a dumpster. My curiosity wouldn't let me just leave
it sitting there without investigating. It had a fat stack of $50's and $100 bills in it. But it also had
a driver's license and credit cards that we could track down the owner with. We found her. She had
set the pocketbook on the dumpster while she shut the trunk of her car. She was in her late seventies
and had taken the money out of the bank to share with her grand kids (lucky kids!) She was stunned
when we knocked on her door and was holding the pocketbook. She barely thanked us, but I think
it was more due to her shock than her being rude. I'd do the same thing if I found another one.

HH,
Ramapirate

 

[wyat]

Hey all!
First off, it's CARMA! Honesty pays off (today, tomorrow? Who knows.) Everyone here has
great views on the matter. In our hobbie field we have the fortune and responabilty to see these
things in foresight and prepairing for the "what ifs." In my opinion, being a small contractor on the
side for most of my adult life, $18,200 (10%) would be a nice addition to the check for remodeling
a bathroom! This is the reason I have pursued this hobbie. I have found numerous things in homes I've
worked on such as: 20 babe ruth baseball cards, 50+ Nolan Ryan & Ryne Sanberg cards, in the walls,
coins, hands full of jewelry, old blue prints, 6 different comic books in two different homes never been opened,etc.. Although it's not $182,000, they were some pretty nice finds and in every case I've been able
to keep some or all of it, which I would not have if I had not come to some agreement beforehand.
She owns the property and every thing on it, period. Should she have ofered more than 10% ? I think so!
Should he expect 40% or more? Maybe not. Thing is... they were both key factors in the recovery of a great
find, and 10% of something is alot better than 100% of nothing!
These fools argued over the pees and lost sight of the "steak" and the courts got the FEAST!
Go figure...
may your dreams be great, and your finds be grand!
John

 

[pookie-princess of rust]

i agree. 10% of something is better than 100% of nothing... thats cool the stuff you found...

Hey all!
First off, it's CARMA! Honesty pays off (today, tomorrow? Who knows.) Everyone here has
great views on the matter. In our hobbie field we have the fortune and responabilty to see these
things in foresight and prepairing for the "what ifs." In my opinion, being a small contractor on the
side for most of my adult life, $18,200 (10%) would be a nice addition to the check for remodeling
a bathroom! This is the reason I have pursued this hobbie. I have found numerous things in homes I've
worked on such as: 20 babe ruth baseball cards, 50+ Nolan Ryan & Ryne Sanberg cards, in the walls,
coins, hands full of jewelry, old blue prints, 6 different comic books in two different homes never been opened,etc.. Although it's not $182,000, they were some pretty nice finds and in every case I've been able
to keep some or all of it, which I would not have if I had not come to some agreement beforehand.
She owns the property and every thing on it, period. Should she have ofered more than 10% ? I think so!
Should he expect 40% or more? Maybe not. Thing is... they were both key factors in the recovery of a great
find, and 10% of something is alot better than 100% of nothing!
These fool argued over the pees and lost sight of the "steak" and the courts got the FEAST!
Go figure...
may your dreams be great, and your finds be grand!
John

 

[hollowpointred]

I think if you find a chunk of money in somebody elses house it probably belongs to them.
The situations I'm talking about are more the "ask permission to hunt someones property
and the owner agrees you can hunt and you find a nail keg full of $20 gold pieces" situation.
What I find is mine, period. I don't tell anybody, I get the loot and haul fanny. If I was given
permission to demolish and haul off a building, I find stacks of hundred dollar bills,
it gets hauled off with the trash and hastily put in one of my many "sneaky" places.
I know a dude that bought an office machine business from the family of a deceased owner back in
the 1970's. He found like $30,000 or $40,000 in the walls of the building that came with the
business. He kept it, and some of the people that found out about it always gave him crap
over it. I don't even think he had a moral much less legal obligation to give the money back
to the family. The way I looked at it, it was his business, his building, his money.
But, (I've mentioned this on here before but it's was pretty cool anyway) back in the late 1990's
my wife and I found a pocketbook sitting on a dumpster. My curiosity wouldn't let me just leave
it sitting there without investigating. It had a fat stack of $50's and $100 bills in it. But it also had
a driver's license and credit cards that we could track down the owner with. We found her. She had
set the pocketbook on the dumpster while she shut the trunk of her car. She was in her late seventies
and had taken the money out of the bank to share with her grand kids (lucky kids!) She was stunned
when we knocked on her door and was holding the pocketbook. She barely thanked us, but I think
it was more due to her shock than her being rude. I'd do the same thing if I found another one.

HH,
Ramapirate

if you have permission to search a property and no verbal arrangements were made saying that the owner gets a part of what you find then that would be different. i would not feel bad about keeping what i found, because when you obtained permission, the owner was uninterested in what you might find and didnt want it.

 

[Silver Fox]

Good exchange and the fact that you all express different opinions shows the variety of thinking that we, treasure hunters with or without a metal detector, have to consider.

Without doubt, when you are in someone else's property nothing is yours unless it's been given to you. But try to get it in writing. Dealing with found items requires thinking about how to proceed before and after and odds are that in some situations you'll lose and in some you'll win. It balances out. It's the considerate thinking that is of primary importance.

Silver Fox

 

[I_Dig_NYC]

Here's my 2 Zinc cents on the matter. There are two ways to look at this and two points of view. It depends on where you are standing. Think about this, in my opinion if you buy a house whether it comes with a leaky roof, a cracked foundation or a stash of loot, it's yours, all yours you bought it. Good or bad it's yours. If it's your house don't you see it that way? Why isn't the contractor offering to pay 40% of the repair bills, nooooo but he wants 40% of the loot right. If it was my house theres no way he would get almost half. And if he "wasn't bought up that way" then why didn't he show some of that honesty and morality and just graciously accept the 10% or $18,200 and be happy right? It's 18,000 more than what he had to begin with.

Now being in the contracting business I have never found anything of monetary value in any walls except for some balled up newspapers from the 1950's, 1940's, 1930's and early 1920's or slightly older. It has been common practice through the years to stuff holes in walls with newspapers as a filling before plastering the holes. Even those worthless wads of decaying newspaper made my heart race something terrible, every time, thinking maybe I found some treasure right, no such luck... But if it had been cash then I gotta be honest even though I believe in Karma and all that good stuff I just know that greed would have taken over and I would have quietly stuffed my tool box with the loot and quietly went outside and did a happy dance.

Finders keepers.

 

[jglunt]

If you walked by a Rolex sitting on the nightstand, would you take it too?

I think this is the point that many people have been trying to make although the difference is that the owner knows the Rolex is there and doesn't know the money is in the wall.

I personally would remove the boxes to a safe place without the owner knowing it and open them later. If they contained a large amount of money or other valuables I would quietly keep them but only if I could satisfy myself that the current owner did not put them there. If not I would return them and notify the owner as if I had just found them. If I kept them, I alone would have to wrestle with my conscience at a later time.

Jim

 

[Silver Fox]

Now being in the contracting business I have never found anything of monetary value in any walls except for some balled up newspapers from the 1950's, 1940's, 1930's and early 1920's or slightly older. It has been common practice through the years to stuff holes in walls with newspapers as a filling before plastering the holes. Even those worthless wads of decaying newspaper made my heart race something terrible, every time, thinking maybe I found some treasure right, no such luck... But if it had been cash then I gotta be honest even though I believe in Karma and all that good stuff I just know that greed would have taken over and I would have quietly stuffed my tool box with the loot and quietly went outside and did a happy dance.

If you walked by a Rolex sitting on the nightstand, would you take it too?

Not a good analogy! You're talking about outright theft. However, consider this. Our retired postman showed me an antique gold pocket watch he found behind a nighttable drawer. He had been given the nighttable. So now the property was his with no strings attached by the previous owner. Did the watch belong to the previous owner or was the table given to the previous owner by someone who also didn't know the watch was back there; unknown chain of command.

Was the postman obliged to reveal his find to the person who gave him the table? That person obviously didn't know about the watch but while the table was his, the watch was his - unknowingly. Did the previous owner have a "right" to have the watch returned?

One can go around in circles trying to specify what is right and what is wrong. In the case of a renovator, whatever he finds rightfully belongs to the house owner whether the house owner knew about it or not. So, the right thing to do is tell the house owner of what you found and hope the house owner isn't a greedy person and will share with the renovator. But if the houseowner decides to keep the find without sharing, you gotta move on. So it's best to discuss such a situation before starting renovation, you stand a better change of sharing the good fortune.

I once was allowed by a kid into his house's backyard with my metal detector; a yard that was actually almost a yard square! But, lo and behold, I found a Washington silver quarter. Unfortunately, the kid was standing over me when I pulled it out of the ground and he asked to see it and it went into his pocket. Of course I was frustrated. So I decided from then on to stash coins in my free hand so that I could make a quick switch if I found myself in a similar situtation. I also thought that as soon as I saw the glimmer of the silver coin I should have stopped digging and asked the kid to get me a glass of water and while he was gone substitute the silver quarter for a clad. That's why thinking ahead is your best bet.

Silver Fox

 

[Silver Fox]

Not a good analogy! You're talking about outright theft.

Theft is theft. Whether outright or sneaking it off someone else’s property. If it ain't yours...well, you know the rest.

Agreed. But as a taxpayer you know that Uncle Sam is the biggest thief and he has national support.