Decorative Arts
Cast Iron Bird Gate Weight, ca, 1900
Updated Value (2013)
$600 - $800 Auction
APPRAISED VALUE (1999)
$600 - $800 Auction
Update: July 7, 2014
In early 2014, news broke of a California couple who had found buried treasure, in the form of $10 million in gold coins. The anonymous couple then hired a lawyer and spent months looking into the legality of their claim on the money. At the end of the investigation, the couple kept the gold. They had spent untold dollars in legal fees in order to find out what children learn on the playground: “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” For a schoolyard taunt, the adage sums up centuries of common law surprisingly well. In general, lost property indeed belongs to the person who finds it, as long as he or she finds it in good faith.
Of course there are exceptions — so many, in fact, that law professor John Orth told Time magazine that whenever such situations are litigated, with multiple parties making claims on the property, “These cases are a mess.”
But the messiness can often be resolved by answering a simple question: Did the original owner intentionally abandon the disputed item — say by throwing it in the garbage? If so, finders keepers. Or, did they accidentally misplace it? In such cases, the original owner might be able to stake a claim. After all, it's hard to imagine a judge awarding possession of a set of mislaid car keys to the guy who takes them out of the deadbolt on your front door.
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