Texas man finds estate sale treasure hidden in chest
First class real estate sale
Shown in this photo are Premier Estate Sales agent Nathan Taylor and dresser buyer Emil Knodell.
It wasn’t long before Emil Knodell of Bellville, Texas, purchased a chest for $100 that, he soon discovered, contained a hidden drawer full of treasures.
On Saturday, Knodell, a retired marketing executive who buys antiques and collectibles as a hobby, visited the estate of a late man in Missouri City, Texas. He quickly decided to purchase a three-drawer dresser with a marble top that was on sale on the third day of sales.
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“Because it has a beautiful marble top, I hope to use it in my dining room,” Knodell, 67, told ABC News.
But as he and a Premiere Estate Sales Network employee tried to load the piece of furniture into a vehicle, they heard metal movements as they tipped it on its side.
“He asked for help loading,” said Jeff Allen, who works for Premiere Estate Sales Network in Sugar Land, Texas. “As soon as we put it down, it started making so much noise inside. Obviously we were very intrigued by what was happening with the dresser. There were rings, diamonds, gold and all sorts of things. It was real adrenaline.” We were both shocked for a second.
“If you look at the front, it looks like it has three obvious drawers with ledges at the base, but at the bottom there is a secret drawer that opens,” Knodell said. Inside he discovered cash, emerald and diamond jewelry, a lock of hair, military dog tags and even Civil War memorabilia. But Knodell said he never thought about storing the items in the piece of furniture he had just purchased.
Allen said the dresser dates to the 1890s.
“I bought the dresser drawers. I didn’t buy these things. If I had kept them, I would never have felt like they were right. There would be a cloud over the whole thing. It’s a feeling more than anything,” Knodell said.
“I’m a former Marine trying to do the right thing. Jeff, the man in charge, also responded immediately: ‘Let’s call the owner.’ There was never any question of anyone keeping it; it was like, ‘This is fantastic,’ he said.
Allen started doing just that and called the executor of the estate, who is the late man’s son.
“He remembers the dresser in a house in Michigan when he was a little kid – at his grandkids’ house,” Allen said of the son. “And he had no idea there was a secret compartment.”
