THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

GreyQueen

I've heard of someone's great-granny who got out of revolutionary Russia with (her own) small fortune in gold 5 rouble pieces sewn into the hem of a tatty old coat. And of someone else who got out of communist China with the clothes on their back and one very large and very fine diamond which, when turned into the folding stuff, was sufficient to buy a respectable house in Angleterre.

Worryingly, I also know several people with licensed shotguns. Shoebox Towers being what it is, I probably am acquainted with several others who own, or at least have access to, unlicensed shotguns.

Guys, if contemptlating storing valuables in your home, please be careful. Always be sure to allow a sacrificial hoard to be findable (most folks hide their valuables in the bedrooms, apparently) so that any burglars have somethng to offski with.

I, for example, have a lovely jewellery box with some very attractive To Hanover gaming tokens (sovereign knockoffs made of brass, genuinely old but worth all of 50p each) and some flashy goldy looking jewellery (rolled gold, all of 1-2% precious, looks very nickable but worth burger all).

I'd pay good money to spectate if some ignoramous tried to fence that lot at one of the local jeweller's, some of whom are known to me personally.:rotfl:

Random thought for hippish crafty types - f i m o modelling clay. Make some cheesy pendant with a circular recess sized to take a gold coin - dimensions easily findable online. Bake. Add hidden extra, glue some felt/ cloth/ leather over the back, string it on a necklace and wear it with pride. :cool:;)

DigForVictory

That's the hazard with hoards - you risk dying & noone else knowing where they are.
Leads to happy archaeologists centuries later. Well, and bemused. Someone in a Japanese Castle had a stash of Roman coins. As you see, happy archaeologist, but one imagines the castle occupants could have done with grandpa's hobby to fund death duties...

Me, I rather think that any heavy lovingly handcrafted bedspread in my household will be subject to a once-over with a metal detector once I'm in no condition to yell gerroff. I'm told currency has a distinct & identifiable tone different to car keys & dropped nails & fizzy drink can tabs. It's just the going-equipped accusation leveled at detectorists that has restrained my lads from investigating areas without permission.

Beaches, however, more bets are off.

Says she with stashes dotted around the house & one that was in the car til my lot found it. I must ask my lads if the new plastic money goes beep. As if not, I may research rectangular patchwork patterns, which might even wash... Which reminds me - an old rag doll could be restuffed with a couple of bonus features. The doll was well loved decades ago & noone will think it has anything other than sentimental value - until they see what's in the feet, or stitched into the hat.

GQ's point is well taken - have a dummy stash sorted too. (That'll be fun - one I'll admit to to a burglar yet conceal from my trufflehound offspring?!) The hitch is going to be admitting to Anything. Mind, I can always say there's an envelope taped under X & if it's now empty I blame them lads...

GreyQueen

There's apparently a lot of Roman coin coming out of Romania atm, thanks to the detector boys over there having access to better machines.

There was some iffy Roman gold (one of my pals had the offer) being hawked around last year, very tasty pieces but no PAT registration and very evasive detector boys; they came off 'a field somewhere over thataway'. No one respectable can touch them because they can't be resold without proper provenance. Shame about the historical data being lost but some unrespectable person has surely bought them and probably exported them by now.:(

I am told that riverbeds after storms can yield some surprising articles, for those who're not afraid to welly-up and wade in the shallows to scratch around with a rake. Not that I've done this myself, y'unnerstand. Would've gone for it but work gets in the way of a lot of fun things in life.

*sigh* the closest I have come to a hoard is finding a Nurenberg token while planting potatoes a few years ago. Goodness knows how many hits the average lottie site would cause on a detector, mine seems to be full of old nails and random bits which fell off the backs of tractors.

ETA: heard of a farmer who had his hoard of gold coins inside empty old rat poison tins on a cobwebby shelf at the back of his cellar. Burglars never did find them.

You could always hide things among the cleaning materials, young men probably would never think to look in there..........

DigForVictory

An old can of cleaning goop. Nearly rusted solid & with a worryingly credible crusty top layer when heaved open. Shoved behind the other cleaning stuff which is per se a bit hazardous like bleach etc. What young male in his right mind would bother with it?

Excavating that deftly will be a tricksy game but it's all possible. Cheerfully evil grin, contemplating old tin of duraglit...

I can sort of vouch for stuff washed down paying dividends - I thought Himself had mislaid his marbles when I saw him shoveling water - but he was shovelling the rocks swept down. As he put it, whilst recovering from mild hypothermia, "free drive, love". However waders & a metal detector & ooh my. Just timing the holidays...

GreyQueen

Of course, if challenged as to what on earth one is doing, one has returned to the site of a sad boating accident where one's wedding band slipped off one's icy finger and oh, we're so hoping that our mate John's metal detector which we've borrowed but don't really know how to use (guv'nor) will help us find it.

A detector boy (well, detector pensioner akshully) told me that sites by water are generally productive, especially if there may have been a ford. Equally, folks typically build alongside water courses (which ain't necessarily now where they were back then, ditto for the shorelines).

Enjoy, enjoy!

ETA; one can remove the bottom of cans with a side-mounted can opener, and add something secretive from the bottom whilst leaving the top intact. Glue bottom back on. Don't tell the lads I told yer.

Karmacat

DigForVictory wrote: »

Karmacat if you were pondering patchwork, then I commend hexagons, but the still less effort & almost as frugal method observed at St.Fagans (gatehouse, If I recall correctly) involved sewing a circle in a scrap of cloth, gathering it into a bunch & sewing the widest part of the bunches together. We are Not talking "piecing over paper" By Any Means here, just pulling a scrap into a circular-ish shape leaving corners etc pointing, then sewing them together much as you might hexagons but with less neat corners. Struck me as deft way of cheaply concealing coins or shoving a wisp of wool into each for a thicker padded coverlet for a crib. (Devils own job to wash, mind.)
It was small, cheerful & obviously affordable with minimum effort, unlike the glorious tenderly patched covers worn by other beds in other St.Fagans buildings, where time, effort & aesthetics had been put together.

(Indeed the Army had a fine tradition of of very detailed patch-working for recovering invalids. Which happened to utilise leftover scraps of uniform fabric no longer fit to be coaxed back into wearable garments, but might also include reusing the braid, embroidering, and generally making remarkable things with it, with a detail & thoroughness frankly terrifying to contemplate. Still pipped to it by the Egyptians.)

That is **amazing**, thank you! I won't be making any myself right now - I have a huge wallhanging and a quilt made by my mum, as well as several bags and smaller, mostly Christmas themed wallhangings. And I love the interplay of the materials on the best ones, but me and my sister look at them, and remember how my mum would unpick something 3 times just to get it looking how she wanted it, and .... no. I'd never do that!


But the method you've described above is fascinating, and very do-able. And much more realistic for women in the 19th century with the domestic and workplace chores that they had. With the air gaps, it would actually be a really good insulator. And if it didn't particularly stand out, it wouldn't be stolen even if somebody broke in.

maryb

I love the story of the romantic novelist who died recently. During the 1930s the Nazis were allowing some Jews to leave the country but not to take anything with them And they got very good at finding gold and jewels hidden in hems of coats etc. The novelist and her sister were avid classical music fans and they were talking to a famous conductor (name escapes me) who told them what was going on in Germany. So they decided to help. They were fairly regular visitors to the continent anyway so they increased their visits on the pretext of hearing their favourite conductor. On each trip they would arrange to take valuables out of the country for an emigrating family. Their luggage was almost never searched and they would witter away to any officer asking them questions giving the impression of being dotty spinsters. And in that persona no-one thought it at all odd that they were draped with what looked like lots of mismatched costume jewellery.

Apparently all these trips were rather expensive even though they were ladies of independent means. So in order to finance them one of the sisters started writing romance novels and became one of Mills and Boon's most successful authors

DigForVictory

maryb wrote: »

giving the impression of being dotty spinsters.

A terrifying but unexpected bonus of misogynistic conduct is that security tends to droop into snooze mode.
Given my sons' plaintive "mum, you're Talking again!" it would appear I may be inadvertently raising the sort of young chap who will see a woman with a pram & write her off as not worth noticing, despite the fact she's close enough to eavesdrop - something frequently done in the Troubles & much useful Intel thus gathered.

I look forward to carrying right on talking to folks. These devices are all well & good, but I much prefer the human touch and anyway, what the children do not yet grasp is that thanks to a thorough albeit gels education, I have a wide-ranging general knowledge (useless for quizzes, splendid for startling them) and get along splendidly with others likewise. Google may gather petabytes of data daily - and I can talk to people, without a whisker of Data Protection legislation, nor needing electricity. My memory (currently!) still works even when the lights go out...

[Deleted User]

I think any burgler breaking in here would feel it was so barren a landscape they might leave us something out of pity! have no jewellery, it isn't my 'thing' , I have no expensive designer items, my prized posessions are my wartime original cookery books and who looks at a bookshelf anyway. The fact that some of them are worth not inconsiderable amounts of cash is not apparent and they would be ignored. I always carry a 'muggers wallet' when I'm abroad and keep it in my pocket with some low denomination euro notes and a few pence worth of coppers along with some out of date loyalty cards that look like credit cards in their slots, sacrificial if push comes to shove and valuables are worn inside clothing, right inside clothing that even someone desperate wouldn't think of accessing on someone my age!

cornishchick

Hi guys , it's been a while .
But I thought of you guys today....
We did a team building exercise at college, called the Island, you've crashed in a plane and find your self on a tropical island , I can grant you 10 items to make life easier , what do you choose ...?
The group had things like family photos , a piano , the works of Shakespeare lol
My list !
Machete , water treatment tablets, fire steel, paracord, survival blankets , hunting knife, tarpaulins, wind up radio , large steel pot, and an Axe ..
I had to explains what paracord was lol