Um. I think that was the point.
Anna Anderson, the Polish woman who believed she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia was a pack-rat-one of the mentally ill variety.
She had piles of junk everywhere, about 30 cats, huge dogs, etc. She and her husband were always getting in trouble with the Board of Health, zoning laws, Animal Control, you name it. They also were paranoid and thought everyone was out to get them.
The Collyer story sounded interesting enough that I looked it up. That’s so sad-poor Homer!
Aaaarrrggghh!!!
It figures!!! My sister goes nuts throwing stuff away for over two years…and throws away the most important, COSTLY things! Those were not only the first to go…they were ripped to pieces (the ones that didn’t melt away first) and then chunked into the immaculately clean, never before used trashcan.
Dammit!!!
I bet some of those envelopes had stamps dating back before dinosaurs roamed the earth…and I exaggerate only by a few decades.
Dammit again! :mad:
Note to everyone - don’t throw ANYTHING away without checking to see what that item is going for on ebay. Or at least let me dig through the stuff you plan to toss!
I know, I’m beating the ebay thing to death on this and several other threads, but I can’t tell you how many times I have listed things just to see if anyone would be dumb enough to buy it… to find out as the bids go higher and higher that I have a doggone TREASURE! (BTW- on ebay, you can generally expect, as a rule, to get from 20-60% of the ACTUAL collectors’ value on most things - but I find it’s entirely too much work to have crap I don’t want anyway appraised, and ebay is at least fun.)
On the up-side…my dad died in 1966. (Hell no, that isn’t the up-side…but wait…)
In my mother’s basement are many, many pulp science fiction (the term “sci-fi” hadn’t been coined yet) magazines. I DO believe there are quite a few Weird Tales magazines there there. If they are not already a pile of dust, ebay might be just a LITTLE interested…
Maybe my ship has come in! 
yojimboguy, that sounds like a fair bit of money tied up in those weapons. If the police don’t give your family an inventory, it may be worth retaining a lawyer to write a letter and get on their case for the value of the weapons. (In the circumstances, getting a lawyer to handle the estate would likely be a good thing in any event, to take some of the load off the “designated cousin.”)
Not a relative but a sad story nonetheless:
I worked in a hostel for homeless men in Covent Garden (Central London, England). Most of the residents were old-style homeless (eg big overcoats, bushy beards etc). One such was “Charlie” (real name Chaim). We knew that Charlie was a jewish survivor of the Nazis (he had the tattoo) and that his menttal health was very fragile.
He was incredibly mean and used to eat out of the bins outside restaurants, never took a shower or bath and was in many ways thoroughly disagreeable, but harmless.
When he was taken into hospital we had to clear his room. It was in a revolting stinking stygian mess. In doing so we found an envelope with £1500 in it and all thought “oh Charlie why didn’t you spend some of this on yourself?”. At least we did until we found a bankbook for £500,000 (about $750,000)
Charlie was earning more in a year in interest than I was for looking after the old sod.
Again there is a link between extreme deprivation and miserly behaviour.
Do this. Now.
If it were my choice, I’d have them melted down into slag and to hell with the money. There are more than enough guns to go around.
Fortunately it’s not my choice. The rest of the family might sue me for destroying such valuable property in the estate. IF the guns are legally owned, they’ll probably be sold off and I will get my share of it.
Considering the number of guns involved and the restrictive gun laws in Chicago, it’s highly likely that at least many of them are not legally owned.
Sorry to hear about all of this, yojimboguy; I know this must be quite unsettling. At least take comfort in knowing that other people have relatives like this too.
My husband’s grandmother is a pack rat, but not the “loads of weird/cool stuff” variety. I have never seen her place, but I’ve heard the stories. We were going to visit, and my husband told me not to eat anything she offered, because there was no telling how old it was. Yak. No way.
Hub’s mom tried to bring order to the chaos, but got no where. Grandma refuses to leave her house now, because she is afraid the Board of Health will come while she is out and condemn the place. My MIL had arranged for haulers to come and pull the trash out of there, and Grandma found out and refused to leave. She now has groceries delivered to the home. It’s really sad. Her kitchen sink is broken and full of rotten, stagnant water, but she won’t let anyone in to fix it. Newspapers, used toothpicks, old cans of food breeding botulism -it’s all there. She lived through the depression AND spent time living on an Indian reservation, (talk about extreme poverty), where she was badly abused by her own grandmother. The whole thing is screwed up.
My mom started the pack rat thing, and I would go behind her back and throw stuff away Big stacks of copies of The Hockey News from 1979. Notebooks of statistics that could be looked up in any reference book in a library or on the internet. She’d freak, but damn, how much of this crap do you NEED?
Then she moved, and went 180 the other direction. She threw away everything. Including the linens my great great grandmother had sewed. 
There was 4 generations of lace tablecloths, made by hand, passed down from generation to generation. She tossed them because “they were just some old table cloths” she’d never use. To say I am heartbroken does not begin to describe it. I haven’t worked up the nerve to tell my grandma, because it would break her heart to know her mother’s and grandmother’s freakin’ bridal hope chest linens are GONE.
Sorry for the OT rant.
Great Uncle Mack had the whole newspaper, magazine “collectible” thing going on - you know, moths and talcum powder permeating everything. Unfortunately all of the paper was discarded; probably the best opportunity for value.
What struck me most was his God-like honorary status from the Franklin Mint. I’m not talking proof sets of standard coins… that would actually be ‘smart’. I’m talking about every commemorative coin that mint churned out for 4 decades. Coins as big as my head that aren’t worth the metal they’re struck on. I think this mint should be sued for cruel and unusual punishment in the form of taxation =)
-Justhink
:eek:
Oh. My. God. I would have wrung her neck!!!
At LEAST she could have donated them to some museum!!!
AAAHHH!!!
I know there is a name for this problem, but I cannot find it offhand. I know of two people who had similar problems…both are “aware” of their problem, but cannot stop. One has a home you have to walk through a narrow path to get through boxes and boxes of things bought and never used. The other has a 3 bedroom condo, but only has enough space to open the door and sit on a little twin bed.
The following might help to explain the illness better:
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria
A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost
shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
shows rigidity and stubbornness
Associated Features
Depressed Mood
Somatic/Sexual Dysfunction
Guilt/Obsession
Anxious/Fearful/Dependent Personality
Differential Diagnosis
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Narcissistic Personality Disorder; Antisocial Personality Disorder; Schizoid Personality Disorder; Personality Change Due to a General Medical Condition; symptoms that may develop in association with chronic substance use.
Internet Mental Health (www.mentalhealth.com) copyright © 1995-2000 by Phillip W. Long, M.D.
Wow. Looks like this OCD hoarding behavior is more common than I thought.
Being heavily involved in community theater, the thought of throwing all this stuff away almost makes me cry. I certainly don’t want it all in my house, but our prop room could sure use a little padding. If anyone is in the position of throwing out the belongings of a departed loved one, please keep us at the Lewiston Civic Theater, Idaho in mind. Please! (My email is in my profile)
Please!
Another thing to not throw out until you get it checked is jewlery. Even if it’s costume, if it’s old, it can be collectible. And you never know what might be “the real thing.”
Find a jewelry store (not a mall chain store) that does appraisals and has an estate section, and have them check out what you have.
I used to work in a store that did appraisals, and we’d get people coming in all the time with Great-Granny’s jewelry box, not knowing what was worth keeping and what was junk.
It usually was the opposite of what they thought…if they thought they had hit the motherlode and were holding the Crown Jewels, it was junk, but if they came in and said, “I think it’s all costume jewelry, but I thought I check it out just to be sure” then it was worth thousands.
Even if you think your grandmother’s diamond ring looks a little funny, check it out. It could be an Old Mine Cut. Pearls are hard to tell. Get an expert to be sure.
The worst pack rats I’d ever seen weren’t elderly relatives (though we did have some of that in our family), but the parents of a girl I dated in high school.
On the outside, they were intelligent professionals who made a good living and had a gorgeous house in a very nice part of town. They were nice people, were pretty hip, and of all the women I’ve dated, they were the easiest parents to get along with.
Once you went inside their house, however, it was like going into J.F. Sebastian’s apartment from the movie Blade Runner, only with more crap and fewer Rutger Hauers. Floor to ceiling junk in every room. Not just built up from decades of not throwing stuff out, but junk from years of going to garage sales, buying everything in sight, and then just hauling it inside and leaving it where it lay. There was some nice stuff here and there, but most of it was complete crap that other people had the good sense to get out of their houses.
I can understand, somewhat, a recluse living like that, but they were actually very social. The whole reason why I knew what the inside of their house was like was because they were frequently out at parties with friends, since my girlfriend wasn’t allowed to have anyone over. It was all very odd.
My family’s the oppisite. My grandmother’s still alive, but she’s just crazy. When my grandfather died about 10 years ago, she threw everything away. She’s 87 years old, has lived in the same house for the past 70 years or so. She has 6 kids. And not a single picture. Everything but the bare furniture was tossed. All of my grandfather’s WWII stuff, photo albums, family memories. It was quite a shock for my aunt last year when she discovered it.
I worked part time for a moving company one summer while I was in college. (My dad was driving for them at the time.) One job we did was in Dayton, OH, loading up and moving a colonel in the Air Force from Wright-Patterson to someplace in Florida. We got to her place at about 8 AM, walked into the house, then called the boss and told him it was going to take a lot more people and at least 2 days.
She had every room in her house (3 bedrooms, 2 baths, large garage) piles 5 feet deep with stuff. Mostly clothing, but also knick-knacks, yards and yards of cloth, and just plain junk. Oh yeah, and the odd dead mouse and/or mouse nest.
It took 10 of us 2 long days to get it boxed up and loaded on the semis. The colonel would find something as we were boxing and tell us about where she was stationed when she got it. It was a really wierd and kind of disgusting job. And of course, the Air Force paid for all of it. Our tax dollars at work.
I’ll echo the comment about lots of these folks growing up from very humble beginnings or living through the Depression. Both of these apply to both of my folks and I rue the day that they die - not just because of the incredible grief and sense of loss, but because of the incredible amount of stuff they have in their house.