Money, Money, Money, Muuunney!

When we were getting Grandma’s place cleaned up and ready for sale, Dave walked in with boxes for packing things up. He gave me a couple of boxes. “Sis, we don’t want this to be a year-long project. If you want to go through anything, put it in your box and go through it at home."

Baby brother knows his big sister well. Actually, it was enough of a distance and coordinating our schedules was an issue, so we both took home few boxes to go through and shred/dispose of what was necessary each trip up to Mid-Michigan. Our rule was "if you find something you really want in the boxes you took home, keep it." We'd pull out anything we thought the other or the great-grands might want. Box other things for sale. I’m pretty proud to say that we did okay. Grandma left my brother and me as even heirs in her will. I’d heard horror stories about siblings and estates. We did really well sharing the burden, the responsibilities and the tangibles Grandma left.

I got the photos. I already had Noni’s photos and unofficially, I was the family historian. I also got all the coins because Grandma and I collected them together and she had stipulated that years before she passed. Laura spotted the metal box in things she was going through. Here is what it reads on the front:

That had to be from goggles Papa had in the navy. But it made a noise like small pieces of metal. Laura had brought it to me and told me I could open it just a sec, then put it in my box. After looking inside briefly and wide-eyed, I closed it and put it in my box, a box that’s been in the back room of my kitchen since about May 2010. I’d simply forgotten it in all the commotion of the cleaning and legal work we still had to do. This is what I saw for that brief moment at Grandma’s house:

Papa definitely brought it home from World War 2 with him. The denominations are mostly from Pacific area countries, the ones I could tell for sure.

These coins are the newest ones in the box, dated 1944:

With the exception of 1 2-lire bill from Italy, dated 1943...

The paper money was all undated.

This coin was the oldest in the box, 1881

There was a Philadelphia Rapid Transit Token, there's one for Minneapolis too.

And a couple of tokens I can’t quite find info for.

Kansas Sales Tax token?

And a “valuable token” from Kennedy Cutrate.

Anyone ever heard of these last two?

I think it’s fascinating that Papa brought home all those coins and well, he pretty much did the same thing I did. He put them away, probably to mess with later, and forgot them. Boy if that box could talk about Papa’s days as a sailor and how he spent his money on leave. Hmmm…

If anyone has any thoughts on those last two coins, I love to hear it!

In the meantime, I’m sharing through Colorado Lady’s Vintage Thingie Thursday.