Good for you, msbelle. I have boxes and drawers of photographs going back to WWI in Mom's house, and she no longer remembers who any of those people are. I've tried to give them to her relatives or Dad's, but she won't let them out of the house (Yes, I know I could against her will, but it would upset her dreadfully and then she'd fixate on it from then on). I hope someone in either family will eventually take them, ID them, and pass them on.

Holli, if you're more concerned that historical treasures will be lost than you are worried about your mom giving family stuff away, suggest she call an antique picker, or take bids from several. They'll clear out your basement in return for whatever they find, but you have to agree to relinquish claim on everything. And if they find anything of worth, of course they'll sell it. But at least it's better than sending everything to the landfill.

There are also all of our Heritage Press stuff, which is mostly comic-art oriented, but there is some sf and fantasy oriented stuff like the limited edition of Thomas Burnett Swann's Queen's Walk in the Dust with the Jeff Jones plates hand-tipped-in by these very fingers and the Who Was That Monolith I Saw You With? book.

Yes, that weird sound was my eyes bugging out with greed. You can get serious money for Queens Walk in the Dusk; at least, every copy I've seen listed for sale was for more than I was willing to pay.

I only have a few copies of Queens, but I put so much work into it that I feel like one should be in a museum. (Here is where online communication fails. That statement should be accompanied by an wry grin with a tiny wince of pain.) The prices I've seen have been all over the map. I suppose I should take advantage of them. Lord knows we lost our shirts on the book.

On the other hand, before he died, my grandfather made my grandma promise to go through everything in the basement before she threw anything out. We think he may have hidden money down there-- it's the kind of thing he'd do.

My grandfather always told my parents to "look through the books" because he hid money in there. So when he died, my mom and Aunt spent I don't know how long shaking every book. Grand total: $50.00. It was a small fortune to him. I wonder if he even remembered which books it was in...

Oh, my dad used to hide money behind the pictures in picture frames. Mom has been so possessive of everything since he died we haven't even begun to check the frames.

I was going to have a group family shot reframed for their Christmas present one year, and found two twenties tucked between the back of the photo and the cardboard backing.

A friend's mother kept changing where she hid the silver. No one could figure out whether she kept thinking of better places or she had some sort of belief that the burglars were watching her. Finally my friend asked her mother if she could just put a note in the safety deposit box about the current location of silver.

Ginger, I know you've been asked before, but I love your tagline. Where's it from?

It's from Lois McMaster Bujold's The Paladin of Souls. The whole quote is:

"And the Bastard [a god] grant us in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding."

It's a wonderful book that really hit me emotionally. At the end, a character says that he's too old to start over, and the heroine of the book says, "You have more years ahead of you now than Pejar, half your age, whom we buried outside these walls these two day past. Stand before his grave and use your gift of breath to complain of your limited time. If you dare."

On the other hand, before he died, my grandfather made my grandma promise to go through everything in the basement before she threw anything out. We think he may have hidden money down there-- it's the kind of thing he'd do.

My grandfather always told my parents to "look through the books" because he hid money in there.

A very good friend of ours grandfather died. The family went through the house. As far as I remember, over $100,000.00. Depression era man who never trusted banks again.

And in thinking about it, it would be a hell of a way to NOT pay taxes on it. It's CASH.

Isn't the first million of a given person's estate tax-free anyway?