Before my sister left to go off on the mission field she gave me a bunch of stuff from our grandmother’s house that she had been keeping. It was like 3 boxes and a briefcase. The briefcase, this black thing with a 3 number lock had been around my family for years and I remember it holding everything from my mother’s school stuff to my grandmothers most important papers.

So when my sister gave it to me I was excited to open it and see what it contained. Turns out it was locked and neither of us knew the combination. Of course my mother and grandmother aren’t with us anymore so we couldn’t ask them, and M-Fuge and life sort of took over my brain and I put the briefcase in the garage and forgot about it for a year or so.

Yesterday when I was packing up the garage and trying to get things out there organized I found the briefcase again. Well, lately I have been watching lots of Pawn Stars and there is always someone walking in with something that they found in their grandmothers stuff so I got to wondering what could be in the briefcase. My grandmother loved yard sales and antique shops and although most of the stuff that she picked up was junk I thought maybe she had gotten lucky and found something valuable. In the very least I hoped that there was maybe a savings bond or something else that could help us while I am unemployed.

So tonight, flush with excitement I started up a movie and starting with 000 began to go through the combinations. I had a feeling that the combination had something to do with my mother’s birthday, so I almost just started in the 100′s but I wanted to be thorough. It actually didn’t take that long to get to the right number (it was in the 100′s) and I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear the “click” and feel the latches push as the case popped open.

The excitement ended pretty quickly when I realized that the only thing in the case were photographs.

Now here is the part of the story when I am supposed to tell you that I spent the evening looking through those pictures and the memories that they uncovered where more valuable than anything else I could have found in there. But honestly I like cash, or at the very least a collectible coin or two. To top it off the pictures aren’t really good pictures. All of the ones that actually show people’s faces are duplicates of pictures that we have in other albums so I have seen them before, quite recently actually.

I guess I will have to keep looking for treasure other places. Unless anyone wants to buy a briefcase full of blurry shots, far away shots, and duplicates of teenagers from the early 90s.