A Pennsylvania woman was lucky to escape relatively unscathed after a mysterious heavy box fell from the ceiling of the home she was renovating with her boyfriend.
Fred Garryson from Pittsburgh told Newsweek his partner “just grazed” when the metal toolbox fell through the ceiling. “The drywell was being taken off the ceiling when the box fell,” he said. “She was very surprised, but thankfully okay though.”
Remodeling can be testing at the best of times. Last year, a survey of 1,000 U.S. homeowners by Block Renovation, a firm linking homeowners with professional contractors, found that 85 percent of those remodeling their home had experienced significant stress. Seventy-five percent were emotionally burnt out at the delays and disruptions the process caused.
His girlfriend’s near-miss with the mysterious toolbox in the ceiling was stressful to say the least, but the situation would soon take another unexpected turn when the couple opened it up and saw what was inside.
Packaged up in a series of plastic food bags, they found a selection of silver coins. Counting them up, they found 90 percent silver half dollars, 40 percent silver half dollars, 90 percent silver dimes and 90 percent silver quarters.
There were 454 of the 90 percent silver dimes and 379 of the 90 percent silver quarters, along with 21 of the 90 percent silver half dollars. It was a substantial find, but Garryson admits they didn’t quite realize how substantial it was straight away.
“My girlfriend found them and didn’t realize the value at all,” he said. “We kept them around for a few months and were planning on taking them to the bank.”
It was only when Garryson started doing research into the potential value of the coins that he realized they could be worth substantially more.
Even then, however, he wasn’t quite prepared for just how much more that would be. He said he was expecting the coins to be worth somewhere in the region of $2,000 at most.
But after crunching the numbers, reading up on the current value of silver, and posting the discovery to Reddit under the handle u/Aspiiree, he realized it was a whole lot more than that.
“Silver is so hot right now,” he said. “Currently the coins are between $9,000 and $10,000, depending on the market for silver. There is a lot of instability due to some changes China has made to the market recently, but I’m expecting prices to continue to rise.”
Silver prices have been on the rise throughout 2025, boosted by a surge in demand from clean-energy technologies and AI-driven industries. With the world facing geopolitical uncertainty, investors are also piling into silver, much like gold, as a safe bet in these difficult times.
As a result, silver prices have been pushed to record highs in recent months. Between September and November 2025, the metal’s price surged 50 percent, putting it among the most profitable trading assets on the markets currently.
So while Garryson is tempted to sell off the silver at a handsome profit, he’s decided they will bide their time with it. “We plan to keep the coins for now as silver is a great investment right now, at all-time high prices and still rising,” he said.
