Looking for old beer bottles in the woods of Vancouver, Canada, two relic hunters instead uncovered what one of them described as “a pirate’s booty worth of silverware.”
The “miraculous” and rare find on a random dig in the forest included dozens of utensils and custard cups from the old Hotel Vancouver, and old liquor bottles dating to the 1940s, as reported by Vancouver Is Awesome.
Chris Laub, whose Instagram handle is vancityrelics, and Julien Hicks acted on a tip last month about a rusted-out car deep in the forest off a heritage trail.
They never did find that car, but a piece of metal frame sticking out beside a fallen stump led to the discovery of a different car, one Laub believes was an old Chevy that had been sitting there for 60 to 80 years.
They pulled up a metal panel and noticed something buried beneath.
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“The first thing I found was the stack of custard cups,” Laub told Vancouver Is Awesome. “That was proof there was something there.”
They kept digging and uncovered a piece of silverware.
“That’s when I knew we hit the jackpot,” he told VIA.
Laub recorded Hicks uncovering most of the find and post it on Instagram (Part 1 and Part 2).
Handfuls of spoons, forks and knives were discovered, leading Laub to say, “This is the motherlode of silverware.”
In all, the haul included 85 utensils, six custard cups and two liquor bottles.
From Vancouver Is Awesome:
Even more unusual is the fact all the utensils are stamped with a Hotel Vancouver logo. Laub believes the silverware is from the current (which is the third) Hotel Vancouver, which opened in 1939. The logo is similar to the CN railway at the time, which owned the hotel.
“To find a piece of cutlery with a stamp on it is very rare,” Laub says. “Those are the ones everyone wants to find but no one finds them.”
The silverware is silver-plated over brass so its value would probably come from the collectibles market. No cash value was discussed in the story.
The story behind the silverware may never be told, but Laub surmises the items were stolen and stashed for safekeeping.
“It looked almost like a pre-geocache,” Laub told VIA. “Where someone stashed them for some future person to find.”
“The liquor bottles we dug [up] proximity dated to the 1940s, so it is fair to say that this is a stash of cutlery from the hotel’s early days!” Laub wrote on Instagram.
Laub and Hicks plan on each keeping a set, but they were uncertain what to do with the rest, though people have already been contacting them about wanting sets or pieces.
“What better way to end the year than go out on a random dig in the forest and miraculously discover a pirate’s booty worth of silverware from none other than the Hotel Vancouver!” Laub wrote on Instagram.
Photos courtesy of Chris Laub.
