[JustinD]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Maybe I’d sell it for $5 million and stop by and give the book store guy $1 million to retire on. That would be cool.

I love this idea...theoretically.

Somehow I feel it would quickly turn into a situation where a family member of the store owner or the owner themselves wrap me into a lingering lawsuit for the full amount and it sits in litigation for years.

It's sad, but often doing the right thing backfires in a spectacular way. Perhaps, one could use a legal intermediary to provide a gift with no additional information as to why. These situations often remind me of the commonality of lawsuits when a lottery group wins the prize. Sometimes the holder of the tickets wins on one that was bought individually or falsefully states it was, or in the other couple cases where someone did not put in their share the week it won and still wants the winnings?

I remember one in which that happened and the winners still gave them a substantial amount but they still sued. So hard to judge how a person will respond to this situation.

This specific instance that the thread was based on does seem ok to me IF indeed the gardener story is untrue. If that pans out then it would show an intent to defraud.

The part about offering 300k plus would be more than honorable for the dealer if this is a case of them just completing due diligence to get the best price. How many others would have enlisted carbon-14 dating to find the truth? Based on the initial estimates of the first two auction houses prior to the dealers additional work, the buyer had provided a far more than fair purchase price.

It's now the kids seeing green and wanting a piece of something they never wanted in the first place that now defers back to why the prior imaginary bookstore owner payment would blow up in someone's face.