Buyers on the other hand make purchases on sites like these trying to get the most for their dollars and sometimes can end up with less that what they bargained. If the buyer put the extra work into the item that made him 6k , 26k or 106k how dare the seller come claiming he made a mistake. He made a profit on selling the safe it was not his Grandfathers safe that was sold on accident or any other mistake, if the buyer ruined the safe trying to open it would the buyer have a heart and return half the purchase price ???

I knew the artist but others didn’t. I knew the piece to be from the early 1890s. It was roughly a 5 ft bronze sculpture sitting upon a huge granite bottom making it well over 5 ft. Upon testing the bronze everything sounded good except the left leg had that dull sound to it, to me it sounded like an internal fracture.

WELL, I managed to be the high bidder at this auction I WAS ELATED. I paid $2675 and I knew it was going to be worth many, many times over what I had paid.

As we moved my sculpture into my moving van, I heard noises inside the sculpture. I feared the fracture in the leg might be worse than I thought, and I thought “hopefully its just bronze splatter noise.”

After I got it to its new home I cleaned the sculpture and I noticed the base of the leg of the bronze sculpture and the granite base were not parallel, so I decided to repair it the next day. As we tilted the sculpture over and we took the base off, we found this yellow dirty towel stuffed inside the left leg … but it was what was inside the towel that had my heart racing!

I saw yellow, a dirty yellow, and realized they were gold coins stuffed inside there …. the grand total was 42 double eagle gold coins dating from 1879-1905!

It pays to know art…………. and by the way I told the auction house of my find and how well I did on my purchase just to rub it in a little I COULDNT HELP IT. Next time I’ll tell you about a fairly well known artist’s oil painting I bought for $325… It was classical Renaissance, and its true value was well over 6 figures!

I GUESS ILL KEEP IT

Using a locksmith is an option that would have opened the device without ruining his small investment, AND gives him the opportunity to change the combination so he could use the safe with a new combination.

Do I think this subject is a head scratcher? Yes, I do.

Do I think this situation makes sense? Personally, no I don’t. It just doesn’t jive with me.

If I were the seller, I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over this. You’ve got at least one reader out here that thinks there’s something wrong with the story (On the buyers end).

Patrolman873

Why use a torch, it is easy to open the safe with an amplified ‘ear’
like the safe crackers use, or just drill it out.

Like storage lockers, you win it you keep it.

Having fun on eBay.

Also, @Doug, do you live in the US? Of course the IRS is like the mafia. They are basically untouchable and there is nothing that any of us can do about it.