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Monday, November 21, 2011

Why Hiding Money in Books isn’t such a Good Idea


While doing some house cleaning I came across this little find.
500 Pesos and 50 pesos. 500 Argentine pesos is almost 100 USD, too bad its “old” pesos, from the 80’s. After that came the Austral and then Pesos again. Back in the day 500 pesos was the equivalent of 500 USD. Too bad inflation destroyed its purchasing value long ago, even before the change of currency.
I know finding 500 USD stashed from the 80’s would have been another story since its not as unstable as some south American currency but I still think there’s a couple lessons there.
First, paper money isn’t a great idea because inflation or unstable economies may cause it to lose value. Second, I think it clearly shows how easily money hidden in books gets either lost of forgotten!!
Join the forum discussion on this post!

FerFAL

8 comments:

Anon E. Mouse said...

There are book safes capable of holding gold and other valuables. I agree that holding currency in books is a high risk proposition, but holding gold, silver, and other tangibles in a book safe... now that would have been a boon for you.

Cheers!

Penny Pincher said...

Money (paper that is) should always be kept in a metal box or a jar or something like that because if it's just in a drawer or a book, mice could chew it up to make a nest. Also if you have bookworms they can eat holes in the money as well.

Anonymous said...

I think that there is real risk that gold and silver could be confiscated. And there is also the risk of break in and robbery. The best way is to take off one of your kitchen cabinets and then hide it in between two by fours behind some drywall. No one including the police is going to disassemble your kitchen to look for it. The downside is that it will take you 10 minutes to get your gold and silver.

Anonymous said...

I still keep my 1,000,000 Peso note (I think the previous series of bills than your 500 peso note). I got it in the 80's in Cordoba. A nice reminder that it is just paper and ink.

Anonymous said...

Actually, books have more pluses than minuses as far as storing money goes. First of all, it goes without saying that keeping money in a bank these days is just a bad idea. If you have as many books as I do then it would take someone HOURS to look through all of them to find your stash. Many of you will be concerned about fire but if you have ever seen books burned in a fire you will have noticed that they tend to scorch on the outside and remain intact on the inside. As far as forgetting where you put the money (which book) all I can say is you must have a lot more money than I do!

Anonymous said...

Hiding money in walls may not be a good plan, either. I worked with a man that did remodeling in the 70's along with his brother. During a remodeling job of an old farm house for an elderly widow, they discovered a mason jar full of gold coins from the 1920's & 30's, hidden in a wall. Apparently her father (or her husband's) had hid it from FDR's illegal confiscation. For whatever reason he didn't disclose their existence, perhaps because it didn't become legal until some time later, maybe even after he had died. Also, with today's electronics I'm sure it would be easily detectable, or else a "blank spot" detected in a wall. Might be worth it to have a small amount hidden for the authorities to find, as a decoy, & that may apply to other prepping supplies as well.
By the way, the men gave the jar to the old lady, who let each of them keep one coin as a reward for their honesty.
Eric in Michigan

EJ said...

I also have a replica of a one hundred trillion dollar bill from the reserve bank of Zimbabwe. makes a good book mark.
Also thieves around here will routinely trash book shelves looking for stashed treasure as a priority.
Eric in Michigan

Anonymous said...

Well, i have a friend, to who was been broken into. All cash, and jewellery was gone without any mess (they have not noticed, until the neighbor didn't tell that she was broken into, too), they used keys (some sort of factory replacements) - the police could not find any scratch on the locks. According to the detectives they have used metal detector to search the hidden money/gold/safe, but the left it in one of the crime scenes (for now at least 30, and they have not been caught yet).