Big Find - What Would You Do? Scenario 1

[abothebear]

Sometimes when I can't sleep, I imagine a scenario where I find a hoard of T206s. I am not a T206 collector, but having the largest audience, T206s are one of the better cards to find a hoard of. The scenario changes a little bit each time I run through it, as does my sequence of actions. I thought it would be fun to see what others might do. I also know that some of you have actually experienced this, so you've gone down this road for real, not just in half-sleep dreaming.

Scenario 1 - This one is fairly straightforward. You've bought an old house you intend to turn into a rental unit. After closing you go through your new house and find some old crates that were left in the crawl space. You bring them down to the kitchen and set them on the counter and start looking through them. In one crate you find three cigar boxes packed to the lid with loose t206 cards (maybe 1000 - 1200 total). At first glance, they seemed to have been casually tossed in these boxes immediately after pulling them from the cigarette pack. Maybe the original smoker had little immediate interest but did not want to throw them away, maybe he'd give them to the neighbor boy if you thought of it when he next saw him. Their condition is unhandled, but they've been in a loose pile in a wooden cigar box for over a hundred years, so they should, for the most part, be in top shape. Initially, you see Sweet Cap 150 and Old Mill backs.

What do you do? Step by step, even down to details like - do you go buy white gloves to handle them with? or do you check with a lawyer about ownership laws?. And you can take it as far as when the cards are firmly in your own collection or are up for trade or sale or auction somewhere.