A Redditor is posting photos of a family that bought a house filled to the brim with collectibles from Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other geek icons. And they have no idea what to do with it.
What’s staggering is that they could be sitting on potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you go through the photo gallery posted on Reddit, there’s what looks to be two custom commissions from Kevin Eastman, as well as several paintings that are clearly commissions, not to mention at least three life-sized statues. The centerpiece seems to be a framed collection of props from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, with all four sets of weapons as well as a prop drawing.
In other words, it’s a nerd goldmine. That was just sitting there. Yeah, there’s no way this got there thanks to a happy ending.
Currently, there are two theories on the Reddit thread. The first is that, as one Redditor claims, it was a bank sale where the former owners lost their jobs in quick succession and the items were left behind to increase the cash value of the house and get a little more money in their pockets. That’s plausible; honestly, this stuff is a nightmare to store and an even bigger nightmare to insure. If you don’t have a lot of cash, leaving it behind may make more fiscal sense.
The other, and more depressing, theory is that it was an estate sale where the deceased had no real debt and no family, in which case his or her property was just sold off pretty much sight unseen by the bank. Banks tend to take a “you bought it, it’s your problem” attitude towards homes, and estate sales only happen if banks have time or believe it to be of value; the bank might have seen this stuff and decided it was junk.
Either way, the family in question is apparently planning to sell the stuff off, so if you want any of it, or you want to alert the former owners what’s up, you should get in touch ASAP.