Family heirlooms are often carefully preserved and handed down from generation to generation in a bid to preserve a family's history and the origins of its forebearers. In a stroke of luck, however, a man discovered that his family heirloom was indeed highly valuable and one he had no idea about.
On a recent cleaning bout, a man named Vijay Basrur found something exciting while clearing out trash from his mother's room. Tucked among all his family belongings was a notebook that had belonged to his grandfather and had been stowed away in the house for 30 years.
While the discovery of the notebook was nostalgic enough, the contents of the book have been taking the whole world by surprise. The notebook was indeed an autograph book in which Basrur's grandfather had collected the autographs of some very popular and historically important Indian personalities including Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and scientist CV Raman.
Basrur could not believe what he had found and shared images of the notebook on Twitter.
"Been cleaning my Mom's place over the last few days. On Saturday we discovered something which I wasn't aware of was at my house for the last 30 years. Discovered my grandfather's autograph book which has signatures of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, BR Ambedkar and CV Raman," Basur, who founded the music listening platform OK Listen, wrote on the microblogging site.
He went on to dub the discovery as "surreal".
The discovery has evoked a host of reactions from Twitterati, many of whom were in equal disbelief.
So cool!
— Ashish K. Mishra (@akm1410) December 7, 2020
The capitalist in me be like “wow, a million bucks
— Manan Kapur (@Kapurmanan) December 7, 2020
same feeling .. but it's priceless ..amazing collection.
— Subhendu Panigrahi スブヘンドゥ=パニグラヒ (@skipiit) December 7, 2020
Can't imagine how surprised you must've been after seeing the autographs in the book
— Rahul Jadhav (@iRahulJadhav) December 7, 2020
These needs be place inside moisture, light and temperature controlled boxes otherwise the ink may fade away.
— Krishna (@ikkdeep) December 7, 2020
While most people marveled at the notebook and its priceless contents, a thoughtful few also gave advice regarding proper maintenance and preservation of the notebook.
Items related or belonging to historic personalities such as MK Gandhi have been known to be auctioned at exorbitantly high prices. In 2013, a letter that was written by Gandhi while he was detained in 1943 was auctioned in London's Ludlow for £115,000 (approximately 1.13 crore).
More recently, a pair of glasses that belonged to the slain freedom fighter fetched a whopping $34k (approximately 2.5 crores).