Me I lost a small Swiss Army knife while doing one of the many leaf cleanups each year. I come home from a shift and low and behold my wife had found my lost knife. Only 10 years had passed. I cleaned it up and it is still in use. Has anyone else been in the lucky column as I have at least this time?

The other day I was making a pot of gumbo and thought I'd put in some Old Bay. I know I had a can in the cupboard. I know I did.

I went through that cupboard and the one next to it twice. I went through a separate spice rack. I went through a large container I keep bulk spices in for refills. I went through the pantry. No Old Bay.

The next day I opened up the original cupboard and there, staring me in the face, was the can of Old Bay.



Apparently I have ghosts.

While you were looking, the old bay may have just been in the can.

I was living in a very rural part of S. New Mexico. I had a sterling silver belt buckle that my Dad had given me. He got it in Juarez Mexico when he was getting out of the Army in 1952. He wore it for years, then gave it to me.
So about 1980 I was staying at a remote ranch in the Bootheel region of NM, and was gone for a couple of days.
When I got back, I found the house broke in to, not too surprising but the fellers ate up all my food and made a mess and among other stuff missing, my belt buckle was gone.
I reported it to the Sheriffs office and about 6 weeks later was notified that the suspects were in custody and did I want my property back? So I got the buckle back, I declined the boots and shirts and pants they stole, haha. Curiously, I got a phone call from a lawyer in Buanaventura, Chihuahua a bit of time after, begging me to decline prosecution on the thieves. I told him to eat shit, they pissed me off. Went through my wifes underwear drawer, haha.

Go looking for something and cannot find it. Even after making multible passes thru the house and garage. Even searching under the couch cushions. And the later said item is found and you immedately remember it is exactly where you put it so as to be able to find it easy later. Been there / done that / got the t-shirt..... At least I will admit it!!! ......... drill sgt.

Not to me directly, but I remember after we moved into a new house my mom couldn’t find her rolling pin. Her grandmother had given it to her and not only was it special but it was also really nice. She was very sad about the loss.

Years later we moved again and while unpacking the kitchen boxes she found that rolling pin in a box.

Lost my wallet once 20 years ago. 15 years later it showed up at my house in the mail. Everything in it had long since expired and been canceled but some honest abe dropped it in the mail with no return address. Wish I could have shown my admiration and gratitude.

My EDC flashlight, a Surefire E2D Defender that I always kept in my jacket pocket when I was riding the bus to work every day (pre-covid), disappeared almost a year ago. About 10 days ago I was going through some old boxes of junk in my spare bedroom and there it was! Absolutely no idea how it got there. Gremlins, I guess. I hate those little fuckers.

Back in '84' our house was broken into and 6 handguns were stolen. The detectives said the guy was a pro and pled guilty to 18 burglaries in the area and used a local fence to unload his booty. By the time that they busted him the guns were long gone.
8 years later a detective showed up at my job and told me that one of the guns showed up at a local pawn and gun shop. A guy was pawning it and the owner ran the serial number and saw that it was stolen. The gun was an Interarms Virginian Dragoon in .45 LC. I still have it just as a reminder. I don't think it was ever fired or handled in those years.

Here it is:



Jim

Before my dad passed away he went though a troubling period of giving things away to people who would come by and visit him. Nothing that were really heirloom items, but there were a few things that mom and I would have liked to keep. Over the next year as we went through his things I discovered two shotguns missing. One was an old Ithaca 37 Featherweight I used in HS; the other was my grandfather's 870 Wingmaster. Both had sentimental value and we finally concluded that he'd given them away. I gently inquired with some of his friends and people who came to visit him, but none admitted anything about the shotguns.

Five years after his death, mom wanted to move closer to me so we went through the process of moving her things, including a beautiful antique upright piano my dad had refinished when I was a kid. As the movers were hoisting it up on the dolly, the entire lower front panel fell off to reveal the bottom portion of the sound board. There were also two long items wrapped in wool army blankets which turned out to be the two missing shotguns. Apparently during one of his bouts of dementia my dad had placed these in the piano. I can only guess he was worried about somebody stealing the guns so he hid them and forgot about them. Needless to say, the movers were pretty surprised when I unwrapped those blankets. I was too, for that matter!

One of these days I will find all of those 10mm sockets.

quote:

Originally posted by Patrick-SP2022:
One of these days I will find all of those 10mm sockets.

I think they eloped with my 9/16 sockets.

Jim

Nothing too crazy for me- while out of town on business in early 2006, I travelled to Asheville NC and stayed at a hotel. 2 days later when I left town towards home, I realized my vintage Benchmade AFCK wasn’t in my cargo pocket. I returned 30 miles, went back to my room and finally located it down in the cushions of the rooms couch.

Not exactly on topic, but over the years I have had 22 guns stolen (3 events). I have reported the details to the police each time. I have so far recovered 8 of the stolen guns--2 of them after 10 years from the thefts (separate events). All thefts were in the Dallas area, but one was recovered in South Carolina--found in a pickup truck parked in a mall lot at 0300, driver arrested for loitering. Not sure what the circumstances were for the other long-delaved recovery, but I got it back. I've had others that were recovered locally--3 from pawn shops and one I discovered at the local gun range being used as a rental gun.

Moral: be careful with your firearms and keep them locked up when not with you, and keep records so that if stolen you can give the data to the LEOs. One of the 10-year recoveries was a Pistole-08 that had apparently been stolen twice--my original bill of sale proved I was the first owner.

I will admit that I was not as careful with some of the stolen guns as I should have been--even careful people make mistakes and slipups. (The first event was a robbery of 13 guns--I had been attacked and tied up.) I have been lucky to have had (so far) a 36% recovery rate.

flashguy

The summer 1979 while my mother and father were traveling across western Canada to Alaska by way of the Alcan Hwy. They stopped at a campground for the night and the next day when packing up to continue their travel headed to Alaska my dad accidently left his floppy travel hat but did not realize this till much later that same day. Approx 1 month later when traveling back to the US they stopped at this same campground to ask about his hat not really expecting to get it back. Campground workers took my dad to a large storeage shed and there it was. Shed was loaded with all kinds of personal items as well as every thing related to camping gear. Workers told dad that he was the 1st person in almost 5 years to stop and look for a lost / left item.
................................................... drill sgt.

I lost a leather dayplanner on a Monday; I called around to the places I'd been, but no one had found it. It had the dayplanner in it, with a few spare checks (I never carry a checkbook anymore), an address book, and a couple irreplaceable photos. It was returned on Thursday, about 10 hours after I ordered its replacement. It had been found within two miles of my house, on "my" gravel road. The guy that returned it wouldn't give me his name nor take anything but my thanks.

Everything was still there, waterlogged from rain and crushed/perforated by being driven over on a gravel road. Everything was useless - except the photos; they were in a plastic sleeve, and survived.

My best bet is that I left it on the roof of the car, it got caught in the roof rack rather then blowing away on the highway, and only came off when I slowed down on the last leg of the trip home.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
The other day I was making a pot of gumbo and thought I'd put in some Old Bay. I know I had a can in the cupboard. I know I did.

I went through that cupboard and the one next to it twice. I went through a separate spice rack. I went through a large container I keep bulk spices in for refills. I went through the pantry. No Old Bay.

The next day I opened up the original cupboard and there, staring me in the face, was the can of Old Bay.



Apparently I have ghosts.

Ditch the Old Bay . Use a real Cajun / Creole seasoning in your Gumbo .

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Lost my wallet once 20 years ago. 15 years later it showed up at my house in the mail. Everything in it had long since expired and been canceled but some honest abe dropped it in the mail with no return address. Wish I could have shown my admiration and gratitude.

Similar story: Towards the end of my AIT, some buddies and I drove down to Corpus Christie from Ft. Sam for the weekend. Sometime during the drunken weekend I lost my wallet somewhere on the beach. A month or so later, after I had returned home (I went through in the Guard), I received my wallet in the mail. No note, no return address, nothing...just the wallet with everything still in it, including the money.

Back in the early 1980s my wife sailed with some friends from Chicago to Michigan City. They had dinner at a restaurant. They finished eating and were getting ready to leave the restaurant. On her way back from the ladies' room, my wife passed another table where a customer was choking. People were milling around, not knowing what to do. My wife shoved her way through the crowd and used the Heimlich, got the guy breathing just before the fire department EMTs arrived.

When she got back home, my wife realized that in all the excitement, she had left her purse in the restaurant.

A few days later the purse showed up in the mail with everything intact, except her cash had been replaced with a check made out to her and a note saying that the sender did not feel comfortable sending cash in the mail, so s/he substituted a check (no, the check did not bounce).

A .357 Sig Barrel for my P239 after maybe 10 yrs.

Where? In a secondary junk drawer in an envelope. I was not the one to put it there but I probably was the one that left it out on a counter.
Happy Day that was.