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kuchikomi

Joining the hunt for your deceased parent's 'buried treasure'

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"Read this before you send in the demolition crew," advises Shukan Gendai (March 31). When an elderly parent passes away, the worst thing you can do is leave the cleanup to an unreliable service. It's possible your parent has put aside, and forgotten -- due to the onset of dementia perhaps? -- some rather valuable assets. How valuable? It has been estimated that half of the corporate shares in Japan are in the hands of elderly persons. And when all types of assets are combined, the total amount of "buried treasure" stashed away in people's homes in Japan exceeds 150 trillion yen.

At the very least, advises Shukan Gendai, a person should conduct a thorough search before contracting a cleanup crew.

"The other day one of our workers found an envelope full of Japanese national bonds stuck between books on a bookshelf, "said Takuma Nakai, president of Proassist East Japan Ltd. "In a dining cupboard in another house, we found a bunch of gold ingots carefully wrapped in washi paper. Their market value was about 5 million yen."

"Requested to go through the house of a client's father in Hiroshima, we found a suitcase holding corporate shares valued at over 1 million yen," relates Eiji Kimura, director of a firm that serves as executor of property disposal. "'You can keep them,' he told us. And to seal the deal, he also sent us some oysters."

According to Tomonobu Akazawa, directly of a company named Relief, it's quite common to find cash, items of precious metal, antiques, value-bearing shares and so on. "Our clients are often delighted upon being informed of the discovery," he said.

Unfortunately, some services are not inclined to evaluate items. This is the difference between shori (processing) and shobun (outright disposal). Overworked and untrained staff may not recognize the value of some items and merely discard them; others will pocket and carry home items without a second thought.

"In the past they might carry items they suspected of being valuable to pawnbrokers, but after the laws were tightened to require the seller to show ID, they switched to anonymous brokers on the internet," said Kimura. "These days lots of items wind up getting sold via net auctions. This is going on all over the place now."

In what sort of places to the crews know to look for secreted valuables? Here are some actual examples: In a rice bin: 20 million yen in cash; in a grimy rucksack hanging from a hook: 30 million yen in cash; in a can for dried bonito flakes: 2 million yen. Others include atop or behind families' Buddhist altars; in chests of drawers; between layers of futon bedding; inside refrigerators; in the pockets of suits hanging in closets; in shopping bags and suitcases; and so on.

Not all things of value are concealed. Before discarding them, advises Shukan Gendai, at least take a careful look at postage stamps; fountain pens such as Parker and Mont Blanc; audio components; portable radio-cassette players from the 1990s; Janome sewing machines; old passenger car catalogs; rotary-dial analog telephones; TV remote control units; records; eyeglass frames with gold contents; toys; alcoholic drinks; film cameras; telephone cards; fishing poles; boards for go and shogi; living room interior items; electric massage chairs; and Japanese dolls. The value of these and others may come as a pleasant surprise.

To assess and prepare them for sale may, however, may require a lot of work. In the end, will it be worth one's time and trouble? All the magazine can really say is, "Think before you throw away."

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

12 Comments
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How sad, that the children can't find the time to spend some time in their parents' house to do this themselves. I know that for many people, it seems easier (both in terms of time and emotional energy) to hire a firm to do it - and yes, the firms say they will hold aside items that may be important, for the relatives to check - but I never imagined this to be a trustworthy setup.

It's sad, isn't it. But given the recent tendency, and information about how to declutter (Marie Kondo; the Swedish death cleaning), inevitable that unless we sort through and clear out our personal possessions while alive, they'll all get trashed wholesale anyway when we're dead.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Sometimes it’s a matter of distance. Friends are going up to Niigata on Golden Week and Obon since last year to clean out a house, and progress is slow. If they wanted to do it all at once, they’d have to close his business and go up for a few weeks.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Strange and sad.

But what happens if they find old yen denominations, banknotes that went out of circulation - can the banknotes be brought to the bank and exchanged?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

No only legal tender but might be worth something on the collectors market.

Ah, zichi, oracle and font of knowledge. Cheers, fella!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

No only legal tender but might be worth something on the collectors market

But many older banknotes still are, in fact, legal tender.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Sometimes it’s a matter of distance. 

That is true. I was reluctant to clear my mother's house, and only finding a tenant pushed me to sort through everything in about three weeks, and that was a hard slog. Made emotionally easier though physically harder by not having to throw everything out?

What's the rush, though? Apart from a financial loss, there is no need to force yourself to do something you're not emotionally ready for. No need to do it all at once, nor even within a year or two. Just make sure you have an excellent security system in place... though I suppose most people want to get it out of the way and sold up.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

You have a certain amount of time to get the inheritance process completed, and, as long as they have the house they have to pay the taxes on it, in the case of someone passing. My friends’ mother is still living, but she wants to move down to Kobe, so they go every long holiday and throw out or sell more stuff. They can’t bring everything here, there’s too much. Evidently no one did any sorting or tossing when the father passed over a decade ago, so it’s still the issue of a large house in the country stuffed to the rafters, even though it’s just the Mum living there.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

When my parents go, we already decided a big dumpster will be rented and everything tossed into it.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Thank god I just spent a month sitting next to 85 year old papa : )

0 ( +0 / -0 )

What’s the worth of finding the treasures if the childrens too are going to have the same life. Work hard and die lonely. They won’t have any time to use the wealth and at the end they will bury it too.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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