Selling Forgotten Treasures : Auction of Unclaimed Property Brings State a Small Windfall

It was as if the state of California held an enormous garage sale.

The controller’s office raised $336,000 on Monday by auctioning valuables from thousands of safe-deposit boxes abandoned in California. A buccaneer’s hoard of gold and silver coins, an “Elect Sam Yorty” button and someone’s Purple Heart were among more than a thousand items sold at the Hollywood auction house of Butterfield & Butterfield.

About 200 people attended the sale, which was simulcast on closed-circuit TV at Butterfield & Butterfield in San Francisco.

Before auctioning the first few lots, Controller Gray Davis emphasized that the sale items represented only a fraction of the state’s unclaimed property.

“There’s a staggering $1 billion waiting to be claimed that belongs to 2 million Californians,” he said.

Much of that property is money in forgotten bank accounts, unclaimed deposits and the like. During the last year, the state also acquired the contents of 40,000 safe-deposit boxes that had been inactive for the previous three years. Some of that material was auctioned Monday.

Because the state lacks the space to store the jewelry, personal papers and even fur coats jammed into California’s safe-deposit boxes, items of value are sold at auction annually. Papers, photos and other items of no commercial value are kept for a year or two, then shredded.

The proceeds go into the state general fund, although the records of the sale are preserved so that payment can be made if a rightful owner or heir materializes.

“One of the happier things I do is return money to people who are not aware of it,” Davis said.

Davis opened the sale by asking for bids on a book called “America, Why I Love Her,” autographed by John Wayne. It went to a San Francisco buyer for $300. “I try not to (auction) the most expensive item so I won’t jeopardize its fate,” Davis joked.

The costliest item was an Art Deco bracelet by Cartier. The bracelet of platinum links, fluted emerald beads and 89 diamonds sold to an absentee bidder for $21,000. A bag of Alaskan gold flakes weighing 40 ounces went to a San Francisco bidder for $10,000.

Ted Manning, who manages a gun shop in Simi Valley, said he likes the annual auction because it consists entirely of things that somebody thought were sufficiently valuable to put away for safekeeping.

“You end up sometimes with unique things at relatively good prices,” said Manning, who was looking for American silver coins minted before the 1920s.

A woman from Sacramento had her eye on a cultured pearl necklace.

“I’m probably willing to spend $200,” she said, asking that her name not be published. She quickly dropped out of the bidding, and the pearls went to a San Francisco buyer for $800.

Buyers pay an additional 10% to the auction house.

According to Paige Vorhies of the controller’s office, the state’s abandoned safe-deposit boxes are an extremely odd treasure trove. “We have a lot of funny stuff that comes in,” said Vorhies, operations manager for the division of unclaimed property.

“We had a stuffed parrot, and we had a photo of a tattooed woman once, a very attractive tattooed woman,” he said. “She had the Last Supper tattooed on her back.”

The photo, he said, ended up on an office bulletin board. “We weren’t going to get rid of her.”

One safe-deposit box contained the materials for making a bomb, plus a how-to book. Both were turned over to the State Police, as are any weapons found in the boxes. Counterfeit coins sometimes turn up.

“And there’s a lot of pornography,” Vorhies said. “We just throw it out.”

Vorhies noted that stock certificates are never sold, tossed or shredded, but stored indefinitely for their owners.

He estimated that Monday’s sale would free half the storage space in the division’s main Sacramento vault.

People can find out if unclaimed money is being held for them by calling (800) 992-4647 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The office fields about 150,000 inquiries annually, most of them calls on the “Claim What’s Yours” hot line, Vorhies said.