Several years ago I bought a house from an estate, and in a closet was this Ithaca M-66 Super Single 12 gauge. Cheap gun, but cool none the less. Anyone else buy something and find a gun unexpected?

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I wish, but no.

There was a rollicking good thread here several years ago by a guy who wanted to buy some dishes from a box at an estate sale. The seller told him in no uncertain terms he had to take the whole box and everything in it. So he did.

When he got home there was a nice Chief’s Special stashed among the china.

Battle lines were drawn, skirts were ruffled, panties were bunched, pearls were clutched, and indignation overflowed the forum’s banks on the issue of keep or return.

I doubt this one will get as heated as its a cheap gun. I’d love to find a forgotten gun sometime. The closest I’ve ever come is after I chased a guy in New Orleans. I didn’t catch him (I’ve always been a slow runner) and when I retraced our jaunt I found a MAC-10 he’d tossed under a bush.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Oh I got that one covered! I should have mentioned...called the executor and told them what I found, they didn't want it. He said his parents kept it around to shoot squirrels, and that the kids didn't like guns. They left a nice painting on the wall which now hangs in my living room, and another one on a shelf in the garage which now hangs on my office wall. They just wanted the cash for the house, and didnt want to be bothered removing the contents.

Not personally, but back in my high school days, I had a friend whose father was in the demolition business. He found many guns when he demolished buildings and houses - and other stuff too. Like cash and jewelry. He always made a point of sorting through the rubble for treasures.

I remember one interesting gun he found. A very nice .22 Walther Olympia Pistole.

You have to have been the coolest FeeBee in agency history—funniest too.

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Possum—The other white meat!

Yep. First house I bought had an old Double Barreled 12g and a Remington Pump Action .22 rolled up in carpet in the attic.

Both guns were pretty dang rough, but boy was it a treat to find them.

As a high schooler I worked for my Uncle on his ranch in No. Nevada. I called myself a 'cowboy' but at that age I was a ranch gofer. I was farmed out to an elderly neighbor, 13/14 miles away, to clean out an old barn. I found in an alcove of the tack room a L.C. Smith side by side 20 ga. It was a high grade with some engraving and gold inlay quail on one side and what looked like snipe on the other. One barrel was bulged about 6" back from the muzzle. The owner looked at it and said he had never seen it before. It was in pretty ****** condition. He asked me if I would like to have it. Of course I said I would. I cleaned it up and kept it for a few years. Later while attending college in Reno, NV I brought it up and asked the owner of the gunshop where I worked if it could be repaired. We called Briley and a competitor to Briley about repair. There was no way I as a poor college student could afford that. The owner offered me $200 for the shotgun and I refused that and said I would only take $100 see'n how it was him. He sent it to Briley for a complete restore. It took them nearly a year. I never heard how much it cost my boss. It was beautiful and looked like a new shotgun.

The next Christmas the boss gave me a new Browning O/U Lightweight in 20 ga. I had that shotgun until I got serious about shooting competition skeet at about the age of 40. I traded it in on a Beretta O/U 12 ga. with a set of 20 ga. tubes.

A lot of neat things found in carpet. The house I have now used newspaper as padding under the old carpet. When I tore it up there was a 1936 paper, and I got to catch up on the Olympic news and Hitlers reaction to Jesse Owens. Also included news of the latest purges by Stalin.

When I was a child, I watched my father redo a kitchen pantry in my parents home. After he tore out the old wood, he noticed a deformity in the wall. Putting a small amount of pressure on it allowed it to give way, which exposed a small compartment in the wall. He pulled out a loaded Colt police positive.

We figured it was a panic gun, easily accessible, but well hidden.

Anyone Else Buy Something That Had A Surprise Gun Inside?

Box of Cracker Jacks. But those days of "good stuff" are over!

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Still Running Against the Wind

A young tenant left an AP-74 hanging on the wall of one of my apartments. (Italian made semi-auto 22 that looks like an AR-15). and about 25 year slater someone left a plastic Crossman BB rifle. That's it.

Ivan

nothing I bought... but when cleaning out my late parents house, in amongst my father's leatherwork supplies appears an H&R top break with missing pieces, no hammer/trigger... nickel in 38 S&W if I remember correctly... checked with the police to see if it was registered to anyone (city requirement) they said no and in that condition it is not considered a gun - have a nice day... that was not correct but I left without registering it anyway.. gave it to one of my father's friends that collected H&R revolvers as a keepsake... he repaired it and believe he still has it...

Found a 410 shotgun leaning against a tree out in the pasture. The stock was rotted off. The barrel was bent from leaning there so many years. It’s been in a bucket of used oil for about a decade. Still won’t open.

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No gold. Only lead. Bobby

The former owner left us some kind of funky 20 ga single shot shotgun with an abbreviated stock that clearly came that way from the factory. I think it is a Savage or a Stevens, sort of a grandaddy of those snake charmer guns.

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Release the Kraken

I remodeled a lot of houses in the past. All I ever found were hidden stashes of pornography.

And they say lightning never strikes twice.

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Not in jail.

That's hilarious. My father inlaw was remodeling his house and found an envelope full of Polaroids in the wall...the people he bought the house from left a very strange time capsule.

Not my story, but a former colleague and her husband bought a mini-storage business that had several units for which rent hadn't been paid for quite some time. They cleaned them out to auction off the contents, and discovered some guns (she didn't know what they were). If I was going to abandon a mini-storage unit and skip out on the rent I'd sure remove my heaters first....

Cheers,
Whisper

Bought a rough house to flip about 4 years ago and it was full of trash and junk. In the mess I found a British 303 missing part of the bolt, magazine, and trigger guard. Good news: it was a Savage, bad news: it was cut down a bit to make it a hunting rifle. Found all the parts online and it is now a shooter.

Also, found a 14k gold charm that I gave my adult daughter for Christmas after she said I was going to "bankrupt" the family buying that house! Later told her where it came from. Btw, sold the house at my price later.

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Blaine
SWCA 3490 SWHF 586

Two years ago I went to an estate sale. It was obvious that the old dead guy had guns because there were multiple gun cases in the den, all empty.

In the basement there were 2 plastic (single) pistol cases, listed at a dollar a piece. Both were locked. Since I owned one just like it, and at a dollar, I figured it was a good deal.

One was REALLY heavy. That's the one I bought (for a buck).

When I got home, sure enough, my gun case key fit the lock. Inside was a pre-27 with awful goodyears.

My wife said I had to take it back. We live in NY so it would have been registered and probably listed as stolen anyway.

Ohhhhh Noooo, why can't I put it in a steel box and bury it in the backyard for Armageddon. No, she said.

I took it back and thankfully the other box was still there so I switched it. Got home and it was empty.

Best dollar I ever spent.

A slight addition to the my post:

My dad was a contractor, and after he died it became my job to clean out his work vehicles to get them ready for sale.

In the back of one, hidden under some material, was a large bottle of morphine! My dad was not a stoner, but he hired a lot of down and out people that needed work. My guess is that they were doing some work at a hospital, and somehow one of his employees got hold of this bottle, snuck it out of the hospital and hid it in the back of his truck. It got left there until I found it.

I poured out in the alley behind our garage.

I was given a “box-o-stuff” that nobody else wanted, from my wife’s granddad. Had some random US rifle stuff in it-garand bayonet and combo tool, canvas ‘03 muzzle cover, etc. even a folding machete and a musket bayonet, and an empty black holster for some black powder revolver. there was another holster in the box that I thought was empty. Not. It contained his trophy bringback Type 26 revolver. Also his service ribbons and other memorabilia. I was crushed and honored at the same time.

And despite going thorough multiple times, you never found the first gun article.

Apparently the trunks of cars can yield some surprises.

A late friend worked for a FBO at a local airport in the 1960s. They kept a car around as a "loaner" so pilots and passengers could go to a restaurant or run into town. One day he had occasion to open the trunk of the car and found two expensive shotguns in their cases. The police were called and ran the serial numbers and seemed intent on arresting my friend until the boss stepped in to explain the situation. Apparently the shotguns had been borrowed from someone to go skeet shooting and not returned before travelers got in their airplane and left.

My B-I-L drove a wrecker in the 70s and occasionally was tasked with hauling off junk and abandoned cars to the yard or dump. Before he would haul them in he would pry open the trunks looking for tools or whatever. He did find lots of old tools an occasional a rusty .22 rifle or single barrel shotgun. On one occasion he brought me about 1/2 a can of GI 30-06 M2 ball in 8 round clips and bandoleers that he had found.

A few months ago a friend on mine bid on a job to demolish a mobile home that had been burned in a fire. Upon arriving at the site, he discovered a gun safe inside the charred mobile. The door to the safe was open and various items were strewn about. He found a lever action rifle with the furniture burned off, an AR type rifle with the furniture melted and a few other damaged long-guns. He then saw a lump with around an inch of stainless barrel sticking out. It was a revolver that had been stored a holster which had melted, encasing it. My friend worked at grinding at the lump and then carefully polishing what turned out to be a 4" Model 681. That's the story anyway. I did not see the "before" photo, nor have I seen the revolver in person. The "after" photo looks great.

That house wasn’t in or around Bridgton Maine was it?
Left a gun identical to that one with a Maine licensed Guide who ran the Outing Club back in the mid to late 60’s to shoot trap. Wanted to get it back For sentimental reasons but no one knew what happened to it. Mine had a black receiver.

Be SAFE and Shoot often!

After my mother died, years ago, I found a H&R .32 in her "personals" drawer. It was SA/DA, loaded and cocked. Was a surprise for me.

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Heavily armed old man.

We bought our first house back in 74. The weekend we moved in, I was looking around the basement and saw a gun case up in the rafters. It was a bolt action 20 gauge. I called the guy and he came back and got it.

Back in the mid-to-late seventies a schoolmate of mine's father showed me a couple of guns he had found in a wall between the studs of a house he was tearing down about 10 or 12 year's prior.
One was a Winchester 1866 .44 caliber saddle ring carbine, and the other was a .54 caliber Johnson percussion single-shot horse pistol. Both were in excellent condition, inside and out. He said both had been wrapped up in greased burlap feed sacks, and even had traces of some kind of heavy oil or very thin grease in the bores.
He was working for his uncle who was a carpenter that sometimes tore down old houses when he did not have a new one to build. In this case, the uncle had bought the house and whatever land came with it, and so technically the guns were his too. The uncle thought the guns were pretty cool, but he had no interest in old guns, and so gave them to the nephew as a bonus, of sorts.
If I ever see that schoolmate of mine again, I will ask about whatever happened to the old guns.

My dad found an old Iver Johnson top-break .38 S&W hammerless tucked beneath the cealing and atop the concrete wall in our cellar at some point when I was very young.

Other than that, I don't know much about it. He never really went into detail about if it was loaded or whom it belonged to. I should probably ask him if he ever found out. The house had belonged to his grandmother, so I always sort of assumed that it was hers, but never asked.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

I helped my neighbor bury an old rolled up carpet out in the woods. She said her boyfriend would have helped her but he was out of town.

My grandmothers 3rd husband ( the first 2 died of natural causes...really they did) & her lived in a house in Ulysses, Kansas. I was about 18 when my family & I visited. While there he took me to a closet in a bedroom & opened a panel in the back of it. Between the studs running the length of the wall were all kinds of shotguns & rifles. After he died (yes him too from natural causes, she outlived three husbands & died at 101) she moved out. I've always wondered if those guns are still behind that wall or what happened to them.

An LEO in the last department I worked for checked on an elderly resident and one day she asked him to haul 2 boxes of junk to the curb for garbage to pick up. The boxes contained old gun magazines and he asked if he could take them and she said yes. He got home and went through them and at the bottom of one was a WW 2 1911 with GI holster and Kbar. He returned it to her the next day and she told him to keep it, that it belonged to her 2nd husband that she really didn't like. She further stated that he was a Marine in Iwo Jima.

When I was in High school my best friend and I were asked to clean out the basement of the ranch house where we hunted antelope in season every year and coyotes all year round. The yotes were worth something then.

The old rancher had died and his wife was going to be moving to the "home" in town.

We spent several weekends lugging and hauling junk to the dump and usable stuff to the goodwill.

My buddy found and oilskin bag shoved up in the top of the basement wall, pulled it down and in it was a well oiled old Colt Bisley. We took it upstairs all excited and showed it to the Lady of the house.

She said her husband had more than likely stashed it there and forgot it. She said she had no use for it and asked my buddy if he would like it.

He has it to this day.

Working night shift one night we got a burglary call on a business. Several of us showed up and found the rear door open. As we got ready to enter the building, I looked down and found a Ruger Super Blackhawk, fully loaded, laying in a container by the door. It was a 3 screw.

We got the guy and found out he had taken the gun from his Father's house. We returned the gun to his Father.



Another time on night shift we got a call about a dry cleaning shop's front door unlocked. I went inside to check and looking around for a number to call the owner, I opened a desk drawer and there were 3 or 4 Ruger revolvers in it. All were Blackhawks.


Another time we had a house alarm go off on a local business man's residence. When I was checking out the residence, I saw an original M1 Carbine hanging on the wall in the den. It had the early band and flip sight. He had brought it home after the War.
Years later, I contacted the owner's son to see if I could purchase the Carbine, as his Father had passed away. He took my name and phone number but I never got a call from him. He ended up committing suicide.

After living in his house for more than 30 years, a good friend of mine thought it was time to improve the attic insulation in an effort to cut heating costs. While doing so, he found a Model 1911, .45 ACP, buried in the existing insulation. and left there by a previous owner. He eventually moved to Wyoming, taking the gun with him.

I bought a Bass Pro Safe 13 years ago for $799.00 and earned $200.00 in Points so I bought a 870.

After Hurricane Katrina, I was gutting flooded houses in New Orleans and found an old 12 Gauge single-shot shotgun in an attic. Riverside Arms Company. I had never heard of them, so I did a little digging and found out they were the "house brand" for J. Stevens Arms Company from about 1915-1945. It's a neat looking piece of history, but in no shape to be shot. It's currently hanging on my wall in all it's old, rusty glory!

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Find a way or make one.

Folks in the Burb of the Burgh I grew up in (prior to 68) use to bring "Ganddad's" old guns they didn't want into the police station and left them.

Dad had a number of Steven Favorites ( one became my first rifle and today hangs on my home office wall) and a half dozen Colt Pocket .25s... one still in the box.

When I was a kid, we lived in the city in an old house built in the 1800's. Attached to the house out back was a woodshed with a raised wood floor. The house had no basement. There were passageways starting in some of the first floor closets, leading outside. The Rumor was that the house was either owned by bootleggers or the underground railway.

One day Grandpa put his foot thru one of the rotted boards in the woodshed. When he removed it to replace it there was a revolver underneath. He left it there.

A few years later the house was taken by eminent domain for an interstate highway. After we moved THEN Grandpa told the story. After whining for days I finally convinced my Dad to go back and dig it up. (I was 7 at the time). When we did, the house had already been torn down and everything was long gone.

25-30 years ago a friend and I were returning from a day of pheasant hunting when my buddy says pull over I gotta go right now. This is on I-84 in Eastern Oregon. For those not familiar with the area, this was somewhere between Pendleton and The Dalles. Look on a map and you will see there is not much there for about 100 miles except open pavement. He gets all wide eyed and says NOW. Nothing but sage brush in every direction, but I hit the brakes and pull to a stop on the side of the highway. He grabs the TP from the glove box and jumps over the guardrail in a big hurry. After finishing up with a terrible case of "gotta go right now" he comes back over the guard rail with a Remington 870 in his hands. It had been leaned up along the back side of the guardrail right where he had done his business. Because it was not trashed like it had been thrown out the window, we figured someone had just propped it up there and walked away. He called a couple of county LEO agencies with the description and serial number, but never got a return call. He still has it today. What are the odds of having a "gotta go now" moment and me just pulling over in the exact right spot???

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"Tastes just like chicken"

Apparently, 100%.

When I was going thru police academy, the agency put me up
in a motel, same room for 14 weeks. Being sensitive to the idea
of anything illegal that might be stashed in a motel room, I
checked everything that was moveable.

Lifting the mattress revealed a stash of HUNDREDS of porn
mags. Somebody had a "large melon" fascination, based on
most of the titles.

I invited all the other cadets, housed in the motel, over to grab
whatever they wanted.

AFA finding weapons, I arrested a homeless guy who had
seventeen knives on his person...including a machete!

Remember how I've written that I've never seen a 681? Hee-re's another one!

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

My Dad went to a lot of farm auctions. He purchased a stack of used fence posts. When we loaded them on the truck to take home, there was a single shot shotgun in the pile. Stock weathered white, metal rusty. It went away with a lot of other stuff when the ranch sold.

I found a used bloody band aid in the bottom of my salad once.

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Dave Ramsey Cultist

before you finished the salad???

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Merle, retired
western PA

I'm sure glad this one came AFTER lunch!

Let’s just say he had a well equipped tool kit.

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Not in jail.

Never got a surprise gun, but I bought a $3 shirt at a Goodwill one day and found two $20 bills folded up in the pocket when I got home.

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Pisgah