There’s a special kind of panic that comes from realizing you may have misplaced your wallet. You dig through your pockets and fear, and when you come up empty, reality suddenly sets in. Short of a miracle, you’re gonna have to cancel all your cards and replace your ID.
But what happens when your wallet is found long after it was lost? Is it still worth getting back after all those years? It’s probably been replaced after all—well, that’s what the owner of a Talent Factory Theatre in Nevada, Iowa had to ask when he came across a wallet that was lost 71 years before. But the biggest surprise came from finding out who the owner was.
Losing your wallet is one of the worst feelings in the world. Until you replace your ID and credit cards, it can be difficult to buy groceries, drive to work, or do just about anything. Not to mention, you’ll always worry if someone’s trying to impersonate you. So when Larry Sloane, the owner of the Talent Factory Comedy Club in Nevada, Iowa, came across a lost wallet, he made it his mission to try and find its owner as soon as possible.
There was just one catch—the wallet was very old. Larry and his friend only discovered it while they were reviewing renovations that were being done on the third floor of the old club. They noticed the small brown pouch wedged between two floorboards.
The wallet was in remarkably good shape for being found in an area that hadn’t been tended to in years. The brown leather was slightly faded, and it had a layer of dust on it, but other than that, it was in pristine condition.
The two men opened it up, and that’s when their jaws hit the floor. There were a number of items inside the wallet that were so old that the men didn’t even recognize some of them. The first item they pulled out were food ration stamps from World War II. Larry and his friend couldn’t believe it, and they decided to keep rummaging. The next thing that they found was an old Boy Scout card. The edges were tattered and torn, and the picture on the front looked like it was from decades earlier. Whomever this wallet belonged to must have spent some time in the Scouts.
The next few items they pulled out were old photos. Some of them were too old and faded to see clearly. But others had families and children depicted in them. Just how old was this wallet? What Larry and his friend found next finally gave them the answer they came across a faded pocket calendar. To their disbelief, the year on the calendar was 1944. That meant that this wallet was over 70 years old. Whoever lost it had to have been just a young kid when it happened, considering there was a Boy Scout card inside.
Now that Larry and his friend knew how old the wallet was, they needed to figure out who it belonged to. Luckily, inside was an ID card with the name Claire McIntosh written in blue ink on the top.
They finally found the owner. Directly behind the identification card was a small black and white wallet-size picture of a young man with the name Claire McIntosh written beneath it. This was definitely the man whose wallet they found, but they couldn’t locate him. Larry and his friend were determined to find out what?
An amazing discovery if it weren’t for those renovations. Larry and his friend would have never stumbled upon the wallet. But the question remained: was Claire Macintosh still around after all those years? It’s fascinating to think there was a time when Claire’s family could be reached by simply dialing 8. How cool is it that he was able to retrieve his long-lost possession?
