Finding Family Heirlooms - Where?



heirlooms-1860 cardFamily heirlooms can get misplaced or scattered to other locations due to estate sales, garage sales, items packed away or relatives moving to other areas. To find some of those treasured heirlooms, here are a few places to look.

Take the time to go through coats, jackets, pants hanging in the closet or packed away. Look in the pockets, an item might have been left there years ago.

While in the closets and storage areas such as attics, go through old purses, tote bags, luggage. Especially with luggage, there are so many little compartments to check. There might be found a passport in luggage.

In the bookcases or boxes with stored books, see if a journal or diary is there or any photos, letters, greeting cards or other documents slipped in between pages of a book.

Next check photo frames, wall hangings and even mirrors. Take the frame apart to see if there might be another photo or slip of paper behind the photo or even a painting on display. That was a common practice to actually place two or more photos behind each other in one frame.

Each storage box should be checked, even if it is labeled ‘socks’, you never know what may have been thrown in there.

Look under beds for any storage boxes and then search under various chair and sofa cushions. While checking in the house, go to the kitchen, looking in crock pots, canisters, kitchen cabinets, especially those not used very often. People use these ‘secret hiding’ places and then forget about them.

Start watching items placed on eBay, the online auction site. This might help find items across the country. In the search box use the family surname, also search the name of a family business or a hometown.

Here is an example (shown above) of a family heirloom recently discovered which turned out to be very valuable. A Brooklyn Atlantics baseball sports card from about 1860, with an image of the team players was just sold at auction for $179,250.

Related FamilyTree.com genealogical blogs:

Heirlooms Missing?

Why Keep Family Heirlooms?

Ways to Share Heirlooms

 

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