What's the coolest thing you found in an old car?

I just gutted my '50 Caddy, and here's what I found. Note that the last time this car was registered was 1969, presumably parked since then.

Max Factor mascara tube, very blue color
A ballpoint pen for a sand and gravel company in Cour D'Alene Idaho
A wrapper for some sort of good humor frozen treat, with an add for a mail order genuine "pearl neckalce," not sure they appreciated the irony back then
a 1965 quarter
a 194? mercury head dime
Four bottle openers, two of the old wire style, and two can tapper style.

Given the amount of stuff lost and not looked for, it's not hard to deduce the last owner's priorities.

 

i parked my vette over the winter to rebuild the engine. its very calming to work in the garage while its raining but when i came back to the car i found grass growing out of the passenger side carpet.

 

I used to be the designated driver every ladies' night. On a regular basis I had a carload of strippers. No shit.

Actually, it wasn't cool.

~Jason

 

Cool Thread...WAY cool finds!!!
Up until recently, the coolest thing I had found was a bunch on coins from the 30's and 40's. Last month I bought a '60 Falcon that has been parked since '72. In the glove box was a stack of correspondence from the Ku Klux Klan. It was addressed to the man's father that I bought it from. There are window stickers, directions to a KKK Rally, letters of thanks, all kinds of stuff. The old guy died back in the early '70's and nobody ever looked in the car, I guess.

 

There have been a couple of threads like this. I usually like to bring 'em back after they die - threads like this are too cool to be buried.

~Jason

 

When I was replacing the rusted out rockers of my '36 pickup, a little license plate key fob fell out. It is from 1940, white with purple numbers and letters just like the Texas plates were that year. I have it stored somewhere right now, but I think it was from a Firestone store. Apparently, you would go in and buy some tires and they would make these little key fobs with your license plate on them as a promo.

 

Bought a totaled 63-1/2 'R' code Galaxie to use the motor in my boat.
Found $17 in $1 silver certificate bills under the back seat.

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Bought a 1956 Cadillac Coupe De Ville serial #00003 from a local junk collector. No keys for the car. I figure there might be treasures in the trunk so I drop the key conversation. I get it home, pull out the back seat and find about 150 antique car radios in it. The radios went to the Pomona Swap Meet and I made back about double the purchase price of the car.

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Bought a '62 Corvette in 1977. Could only trace the history back 3 owners to 1971. In 1982 I pull out the seats to clean and find a 1965 credit card gas receipt. The address is only 70 mles away! I get a phone number through directory assistance, call and ask if he'd ever owned a 62 Corvette. He says yes, he bought a new one in late 1961......... BINGO

I ask if he wants to see the car again. He's very excited and does.... I cruise to his house in La Jolla. We talk about the Vette some, then I ask if he wants to drive it... He says "yea, let's take a short trip over to my warehouse and I'll show you my cars" He had several concourse European & Italian cars to drool over.

He tells me about each car. Then opens a large closet and asks me if I recognize anything.... There in the closet are the wheels, worn out original tires and hubcaps to my car. They are the optional 5-1/2" wide base wheels to boot. (The car had 66 or 67 caps/wheels when I bought it) Also got the original owner's manual, warranty book and a receipt from the Chevy dealer from new. Sure happy he saved that stuff for 20 years.

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Bought a Ram Air '69 GTO in the early 80's that had a bunch of porn magazines in the trunk. My buddies and I are looking through them and I spot an old girlfriend from high school, naked in a 1-900 phone sex advertisment. She even used her real first name in the ad.... Yea, a dumb blonde

 

My friend and I were tearing apart a '54 cad today and he was cleaning out the trunk and asked if he could keep whatever he finds. I said yes "what did you find a pile of money?" he then finds a small box down in the well by the 1/4 and opens it and there is an envelope with a $100.00 in 5's and a safe dep. box key with reciept with box #. Keep in mind this car has been sitting since 1974 so I don't think that the box is still there. Sorry allan (39coupe) he is keeping it.

 

I found a bone under the seat. Too big to be from an animal. Looked like a human Femur. Car was a '31 Model A Coupe. Depression era. Lot's of shady stuff going on then. Hmmm, makes me wonder. I didn't keep it. Too creepy.

 

I was working at a car rental agency and sometimes the renters would leave things in the cars. One day this lady comes in and says she left two things under the seat of a car she returned the day before. She hands me her receipt and I go to get the matching box for it from lost and found shelves. I put the box on the counter and open it and there's a huge vibrator and a handgun inside. I ask her: "Are these your items?" She responds: "Yes, they are." So I go: "What's the handgun for?"

 

I found a hundred-dollar bill crammed behind the ash tray in a '64 Chevy PU I had. Considering I paid two hundred for the truck, that wasn't a bad deal!

Another neat one was a '47 Ford sedan I had when I was 16. In the trunk, with all of the parts from under the hood, was a newspaper page from the Denver Post, dated November 25, 1963, right after the JFK assassination. JFK had been dead only 13 years at that time, but it was still something that caught me and my Dad by surprise. He then told me where he was the day the President was shot. Never knew Dad's story of that until that day.

Another cool thing was a '68 Dodge Monaco I bought from the son of the original owner, an Illinois school teacher that bought it new, when she was aged 60. In the glove box were 1969 Sunoco, Shell, and Texaco road maps of the central and southwestern US, along with lots of receipts from 1968 - 1988 for things like tires, oil changes, and such. Along with the owner's manual, too. The car had just 62K original miles, as well.

 

Dude!

You should track that safety deposit box down... don't they keep that crap forever?

~Jason

 

Some years ago I was looking to put a Ford flathead in a 50 Willys jeepster but couldnt find the engine to trans adapter plate.Took a couple of years,finally found a 50 Willys wagon with a V8 flathead bolted up to the original trans in Oneonta,NY.Bought it & flat towed it home to Long Island.While going thru the car I found some wheat pennys,a merc.dime,some S&H green stamps,a nice wood&brass level.But best of all tucked inside a kick panel was a mint WW2 K bar knife in a leather sheaf.

 

I while ago I was working at an old junk yard and under the seat of one of the cars was a BIG blue dildo and polaroids of a nice looking female using it. Good day at work!

 

A friend and I were replacing the package tray in the rear window of his 60's era Skylark a while back. We had the rear seat & most of the interior trim taken out to access the package tray. Once we got it in, I insisted on vacuuming it out before putting it all back together. I'm kind of a neatness freak. My buddy was on the look out for the coins under the seat. He claimed that it was common for the guys on the Buick assembly line to put a penny of the same year of manufacture under the back seat of each car. I'm not a Buick guy and have never heard of such a thing. Anyone else heard of this bit of Buick lore?

 

a drunk cheerleader when I was in high school passed out in my 54 belair

 

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=304246

The coolest thing is the pencil. To think the guy who built me car used this!

 

When I removed the doors off my 1932 3W Ford ... which had been sitting inside since 1958 ________ I found a very nice 1932 US quarter. It is a " S " series quarter. " S " means it was minted in San Franciso.

I am not a numismatist ( coil collector ) but I understand that the " S " 1932 quarter is fairly valuable. I took it to a coin dealer and he said the condition is in almost uncirulated and worth @ least 500 dollars. He offered me 400 dollars as a coin dealer. I smiled and kept it.

I believe that the quarter has been in the coupe door since it and the coupe were almost new.

As a side note, 1932 was a bad year for the US. It was in a bad depression and not all denominations of coins and currency were made. As I understand it ... no nickels and no dimes were minted. Also NO 100 dollar bills

 

I found an Ithica model 37 16 ga. shotgun in a 52 ford truck. Took it apart and cleaned it and oiled it and put it all back together and it works great.

 

I bought a 53 Ford 4dr for parts about 10 years ago for $35,and when I opened the trunk there was a FoMoCo aluminum FE intake in it and a set of finned aluminum FE valve covers. No parts numbers on the intake,just the FoMoCo .

Since the 53 still had the flathead in it,I have no idea why they were there.

Oddly enough,it was a parts car for a 53 coupe that has a 428 in it.

 

My freedon when I was 16.

 

Found a baretta under the seat of a 69 ford pick up I got in a package deal. This was about 2 weeks ago. Nothing too exciting except for that.

 

I can't remember all the stuff, but I do remember a 30" long crescent wrench(i still have) in the trunk of a 455 Olds, lot of reefer from several different cars I bought from friends. And the best and most expensive, is a wallet(the man wallet that holds a checkbook too) full of 2 dollar bills...... 203 of them to be exact, and a mini calender in it was from 1970.

On the funny note, when I lived in Charleston, SC.... I drove a 81 Scout Terra truck. It had the fiberglass top that come off real easy. I would take it off and leave it off all summer. When cool weat came I put it back on. It had speakers in the inside of the top, and while driving down Maybank Hwy doing 70 mph........about 10 copperhead snakes came out and into and onto me, the seat, the dash, the floorboard.......and I about flipped it(it had 44" superswampers) trying to stop. I jumped out before it completely stopped and hoped they would all leave the truck.....hell no,stubborn as my wife they were.......and the Charleston County Animal control was called out. They laughed and said...exact words "ain't no fucking way i'm touching that mother fucker....I quit" So after about an hour, a redneck stopped and asked what was wrong..... I told him and he walked over and lit about 10 marlboro's and tossed them in a hub cap, sat it in the floorboard, and in just a few seconds, they all found their way out.....Thank God for rednecks........

 

When I was a kid, my dad used to make me clean out all the old cars he bought. One day he bought an old Rambler. When I pulled the back seat, a bunch of old coins came out. Good thing they were in paper sleeves stating what they were and what year they were.Also, good thing my older brother collected coins and took them off my hands, or else I wouldn't have known what to do with all those silver dollars and mercury dimes.

 

Helping a buddy today, and we lifted up the seat in a 40 ford truck he had just got. And found an old metal dick tracy pistol. Thought that was wild.

 

A joint in the ashtray. I kept that one.

 

some nude pic's of the guy's girlfriend.....and a bag of weed

 

1912 Nickel wedged between seat floor panels in my 32 roadster, WWII newspapers wadded up & stuffed between door panels & rumble deck lid, made for some nostalgic reading, especially WWII used car prices!!! Back in (1962)----------------Don

 

Baack in the 50's when you got a Cad / Lasalle tranny by pulling it at wrecking yard, a guy I knew came up with a drum magazine Thompson submachine gun. He claimed it was under the rear seat of the 37 Cad they were getting the trans out of. It worked just fine and was really impressive in the dark.

 

i got a similar story i found a old jam jar filled with $120 worth of old notes and coins sold them to a coin collectof for $780. tidy little proffit if i do say so myself.