Stack of $20 bills discovered

What Would You Do...

Home Inspectors come across some strange sights, but few come across a decades-old stash of $20 bills worth about $10,000. "It really is one of those moments you know you are not going to forget," home inspector Scott Davis said of his find.

Davis, who owns a Halifax franchise of Canadian Residential Inspection Services, and the realtor, were at an older Barrington Street residence on Wednesday conducting an inspection on behalf of a buyer.

He went hunting for the access to the building's attic.

"I pushed up a ceiling tile to see if it was hiding the access... and there was this bag from some sort of discount store," said Davis.

He peered inside.

"The stash was all old $20 bills. So the money was likely put up there sometime before the new twenties came out. The money might have been sitting there since the '80s," said the inspector.

He estimated the stack of bills was about 12-centimetres think.

The bag had $17,000 written on it, but it was subsequently determined the bag contained about $10,000.

"I wasn't sure exactly what to do because I had never been in a situation like this before," said Davis, who has been in the inspection business about four years.

The person buying the house had left the property after Davis, accompanied by a realtor, had started the inspection. There was nobody living in the house at the time, so the inspector and the buyer's realtor turned the cash over to the police because they felt the department was best suited to determine the appropiate recipient of the find.

Some family members involved in the estate sale were contacted and given the money. The inspector did not want to identify the location out of respect for the privacy of the family members involved in the estate sale. Davis said he took a photo of his find with his cellphone and said he is happy to have a good story out of the episode.

2011 ChronicleHerald newspaper

By Bill Power, Staff Reporter