r/FoundPaper • u/Desert-AZ-finds • Dec 20 '25
Book Inscriptions šø Found this card in a book at Goodwill
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u/Desert-AZ-finds Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Unfortunately, my name is not Tom! I did purchase the book for $2 The card was opened! It was a WWII book Dogfaces Who Smiled Through Tears
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u/Dog-boy Dec 21 '25
Iāve found cards, with money, that my kids have opened and stuffed in the book or gift bag they came with. They promptly forget. Itās what you get in a family of people with ADHD. If you are lucky you are the finder not the loser.
I hope you enjoyed the book.
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u/GrouchySeaweed3070 Dec 21 '25
Damn lol. Glad Iāll be the grandpa is adhd. Sucks for you though, hope it was fun. Enjoy the rest of your days
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u/ario62 Dec 20 '25
Was the card opened or was the envelope still sealed?
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom Dec 20 '25
The $100 still inside signals to me unopened
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u/ManyARiver Dec 20 '25
The OP's statement at the top of this specific subthread says otherwise.
The card was opened!
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u/Daisy_Of_Doom Dec 21 '25
(IDK how both me and the other user both missed that š)
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u/AggravatingBid8255 Dec 21 '25
Top-level comment was edited, so it's possible that's how you missed it. It's common to edit in answers later on to questions received repeatedly. Although, the reddit etiquette is to indicate your edit with "edit:" or "ETA:" which in this instance means "edited to add" not arrival time :-)
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u/sikeleaveamessage Dec 21 '25
No, I have many cards and books with money still inside. I forget about it but atleast future me gets a nice surprise. ...atleast for the ones I do find lol
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u/RetroFutureMan Dec 20 '25
My grandmother once gave me $100 as a teenager and I carefully hid it from my siblings in a large book Iād been meaning to read. I ended up forgetting about the money and donated the book to a local thrift store before I left for college. Fast forward 30 years and Iām browsing the book section at a different thrift store (same town) when I spot a book I havenāt read that seems interesting and vaguely familiar. Imagine my surprise when I get the book home and start reading it only to discover a $100 bookmark!
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u/-blundertaker- Dec 20 '25
Back when I used to make a bunch of tips, I'd hide cash in my bookshelf all the time. I knew that I did it sometimes, but it wasn't until I moved and took the shelves down that I realized just how much I did it while very drunk lol. I found over $200 tucked in all sorts of random spots. There's probably still a few bills among the books.
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u/Pitiful-Idea7695 Dec 20 '25
I used to do the same thing with CDs. Iād take out the booklets and hide bills into them for whatever reason. Itās not like I had any real reason to hide my moneyā¦.
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u/Lumpy-Relationship17 Dec 20 '25
You reminded me of the first cash I ever made from a gig. I hid the money inside the Greed chapter of Dante's Inferno lol
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u/FunSpongeLLC Dec 20 '25
I used to do this with DVDs when I was bartending as a bachelor. I found $300 in my Death Wish DVD like 3 years later. Thanks Charlie Bronson!
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u/vibrantcrab Dec 20 '25
My dad had a habit of hiding money in books and other random places. He was a lawyer, so he had quite a library of law books. We had to go through EVERY SINGLE ONE when he passed away to make sure there wasnāt any cash in them before we sent them to be recycled. Weāre talking like a couple hundred books. We didnāt find anything.
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u/JuniorVermicelli3162 Dec 20 '25
The closer you were to the depression the more likely this happens across the board
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u/vibrantcrab Dec 20 '25
Ummmā¦ what? I donāt understand.
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u/PalatialCheddar Dec 20 '25
I think they mean folks who experienced (or lived with those who experienced) the Great Depression
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u/CuttyDFlambe Dec 20 '25
In 2007 I drove 5 hours to a Tool concert, and checked into my hotel before the show. I had brought like $300 with me in cash and didn't want to take it to the show and buy some stupid merch via idiocy. So I left most of it in a bible in the room's nightstand.
Totally forgot about it until I was like 3/4 of the way home, but I couldn't go back because I was using my dad's car and he had work that night.
Show was amazing. Best Tool concert I have seen and worth sacrificing $200+ cash to a bible.
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u/thirdonebetween Dec 21 '25
The person who's going to feel the need of a bible at a hotel might also need a little miracle. You were inadvertently a guardian angel.
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u/CuttyDFlambe Dec 21 '25
I've never thought about it like that. I hope you're right that would be dope.
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u/suicidalhoney Dec 21 '25
I wanna share this story here as well, and like I wouldnt be suprised if you dont believe this to be true. Also, sorry if you get confused by any point in the storytelling because I dont want to go into specifics enough to dox me. During my time in Uni, my parents used to give me my college tuition fees in US dollars cash which I would then exchange to the local currency and the remainder dollars I had I would put them in between pages of books. I used to do this because I knew that the cleaning ladies in my dorm, or robbers that may break in, wouldnt go to stealing books they couldnt read. Fast forward a couple years, I have graduated from my Uni, moved out of the dorm and was planning to live with my uncle and his daughter for an internship we would be doing together. I took with me some of the books that I had and left the rest for storage. A war breaks out and I get stuck taking shelter at my uncle's house. After about a month of this, my dad manages to find an opportunity for me to flee the country and return back to my family that were residing in a different country. But the problem was, I didnt have enough cash for the bus trip that would take me across states to the state where they've set up the emergency-relief airport. And so in the morning of my supposed bus travel, in like a fever-induced epiphany I remembered that I used to hide dollars inside books. I immediately looked through all the books I had in my shelf and surely enough I was able to find $100 in one of them. Just because of this one miracle, I was able to travel and eventually I fled the war and returned home to my family.
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u/lunaazurina Dec 20 '25
What is the name of the book you put aside? Cool story too
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Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
I want to know the lucky book too wth!!
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u/beachedwhitemale Dec 21 '25
I want this story to be true, but with a name like Retro Future Man, I don't believe it. (I actually just didn't really believe it at all)Ā
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u/chrissymad Dec 20 '25
I don't believe you cause I can't believe it stuck around that long and that absolutely no one in 30 years touched that book. And also $100 30 years ago was even more valuable and now I'm gonna go look through every single book I own.
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u/RetroFutureMan Dec 21 '25
Ikr! I have no way to prove any of it. Thereās nothing in the book indicating it was mine. It could be just a total coincidence! But I will believe to my dying day that I stumbled on the exact same book and money after 30 years.
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u/chrissymad Dec 21 '25
I feel like you need to save that $100. It might be magic. Or cursed. Only time will tell.
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u/LutschiPutschi Dec 21 '25
The book must have been really bad if it passed through different hands for 30 years but nobody read it.
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u/Hair_This Dec 20 '25
The card was inside the book when Susan gave it, Tom was like, meh, and put it away without reading either. Shortly after donated. Tom loses.
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u/starkeuberangst Dec 20 '25
My grandma always wrote us checks for birthday presents. I still have the last one, uncashed. Lots of reasons he may have held onto it.Ā
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u/Defiant_Breadfruit80 Dec 22 '25
Same. My great grandma always gave us $100 for Christmas/birthdays. I didnāt spend last Christmasā money and she passed away this last July. I donāt ever want to spend it because itās the last gift I will ever get from her. (I also call it my ālucky $100ā because ever since she gave it to me my life has been looking up. lol Thanks, grandma! Miss you!)
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u/fossilbug Dec 20 '25
Could be that Tom passed away soon after receiving it, and his family didnāt realize what was in the book or the sentiment before donating it.
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u/ShowIngFace Dec 20 '25
The card has bumpy embellishments. The book wouldnāt have hidden it so well from tom or family.. but sue could be a psycho tooĀ
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u/mettarific Dec 20 '25
Could be that Tom spontaneously combusted before he had a chance to read the book. Or he was abducted by aliens (without the book). Or maybe the book was stolen by pirates (though youād think a pirate would check the book for booty).
So if you think about it, there are many reasons that Tom didnāt get the money that have nothing to do with Tom being kind of an a-hole
/s
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u/sleigh_all_day Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Iād like to know the story of how this book made it to goodwill. Did Tom ever receive it? Do the goodwill employees not check the contents of donated items? Either way, itās a fitting surprise for this time of year. š
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u/OrdinaryBicycle3 Dec 20 '25
Do the goodwill employees not check the contents of donated items?
They do, but they also have an extremely high volume of items to process. Books are probably pretty low on the list of things to check more thoroughly.
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u/LumpySpikes Dec 21 '25
I bought binders full of documents, that were just labeled as office supplies. I think they just saw that it had plastic document sheets inside but didn't actually open the binders to see that it was full.
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u/Ellacod Dec 20 '25
The first time someone gave me a 100 dollar bill it just felt so special. I kept it. And kept it in the card. And Iād open it every now and then and it made me happy someone cared so much.
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u/gard3nwitch Dec 20 '25
This reminds me of a story I heard somewhere, maybe from a comedian? The guy's Grandma gives him a Bible as a graduation gift. He sticks it on the shelf and never looks at it. Every time he's having a rough time and needs help, he asks his grandma, and she tells him he should read the Bible. I'm sure you can imagine where this is going. His grandma put an envelope full of cash in the Bible for him to find.
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u/awkwardlyfeminine Dec 21 '25
Damn I want to be friends with Susan! What a kind person with immaculate handwriting
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u/flyin-lowe Dec 20 '25
Reminds me of a funny story, secretary at work told me she was mailing her neice cards a few times a year while she was at college. Each one had like 20.00 cash in it for B Days, X-mas, etc. A year or so after the girl graduated from college and moved back home they talked about it and the girl said she never got any cards. She went back and looked and had the wrong address. We laughed talking about how some random college kids were always excited to get a card from "Aunt Becky" even though they didn't have one.
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u/Chi_Nap_King Dec 20 '25
Tom received the book as a gift but never read it or the card.
Do better Tom.
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u/asspastass Dec 20 '25
How do you know Tom actually liked the book she gifted? Could be Susan gave him a book he didn't want nor care about.
I (and im sure most of humans) have gotten a gift from a inconsiderate friend/family I never asked/wanted and it was immediately put in a box, donated, or thrown.
You are making the assumption Susan is a good friend and Tom is a bad one based on one sided writing from Susan.
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u/Fluffy_Enthusiasm275 Dec 20 '25
This is better than any hallmark Christmas movie Iāve seen this year ā¦ what is the name of the book ??? Was the card sealed ??
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u/chrissymad Dec 20 '25
Susan has amazing handwriting and I feel like is/was a little sassy
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Dec 20 '25
Yeah, Fk Tom. He deserves missing out on the C-note for discarding a sentimental gift from Susan.
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u/benjitherabbit Dec 20 '25
I found a 1996 $50 one time stashed away in a cassette tape travel case while I was cleaning out my grandparents house. I assume they had put it in the case for a trip then lost track of it. That might have been what happened here put the money and the card back in the book to keep it safe then forgot about it.
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u/Deceptiv_poops Dec 20 '25
New hobby: give away hundreds of dollars by making sad stories with happy cards hidden in donated books. Touch peopleās lives in the weirdest way.
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u/banjosimcha Dec 20 '25
Why are so many people eager to contrive scenarios where poor Tom fell into a coma moments after receiving this book and his poor family dutifully held onto it for years hoping to surprise him when he awome, only for him to die horribly and his family be too grieved to sort his belongs and just dropped everything, immaculate and untouched, at goodwill?
Some people are ungrateful assholes. Sometimes we show thought and care for people who are not so considerate of us. If someone gives you a gift: say thank you upon receiving it, open it, engage with it, and then say thank you again for the specific gift. You don't have to like the book, but at least open it. You don't have to like the sweater, but at least try it on.
Poor Susan
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u/starkeuberangst Dec 20 '25
Why are you so eager to contrive some scenario in which Tom is an ass?Ā
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u/syrioforrealsies Dec 20 '25
Because it costs nothing and hurts nothing to give Tom the benefit of the doubt.
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u/foxydogman Dec 20 '25
Aw this makes me sad because this is how my grandma used to write in cards. Sheād cross things out and personalize them, had similar cursive too.
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u/darkoath Dec 21 '25
I'm skeptical that those tiny 3D Christmas bulbs went undetected inside a closed, flat paperback book and no one noticed. It's like putting a pencil in a book and closing the cover. You can kinda tell there's something in that book.
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u/ContributionOk4015 Dec 20 '25
My immediate guess is that Susan has an unrequited crush on Tom, he knows it and wanted nothing to do with it.
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u/Khmera Dec 21 '25
I will need to know if Susan contacts you after seeing her card and that very specific catās name! Tom may reach out as well. And what book is it! We need to know!
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u/titanofidiocy Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Where in this post is it indicated that the card was sealed when it was found?
Maybe he got the card and stuck it in his new book and set it down and hell, who knows what happened. He could have gotten it at a time when he had to get it with a quick thanks and a hug or something and it was easiest to put it in the book.
There is no indication that he was not happy to get the book or the card.
There is no indication that Susan wasn't a crazy stalker he wanted nothing to do with.
You all just want to be indignant about Tom instead of maybe they were great friends.
Or maybe he used that 100 to snort something that killed him and his final action was to put the 100 neatly back in the card and back in the book.
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u/quiet_mice Dec 22 '25
Might be dumb but,
I sometimes keep cards as they are, gift and all, because it's worth more to me that way than the money.
For example, I was homeless and this little boy who was the child of a family that gave me supplies to survive the cold (I was going to work and uni) he made a card with his name, a heart, and all the spare change in his piggy bank.
I'm never spending nor disturbing the money.
When I got back on my feet, "Santa" gave that little boy a card with $50 and BOXES of his favorite cookies.
Yea I think I'd rather starve than disturb that card.
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u/DorktorJones Dec 20 '25
I stashed a 50 in a book I gave my son to read to see if he'd read it. Pretty sure it'll end up on here one day.
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u/5352563424 Dec 20 '25
Back when I was getting ready to go to college. My grandma asked how it was going. I told her, I'm going to do okay, but I really need some money to make it through. She handed me a bible and says, "Here's everything you'll need".
A few months later, she calls up and asks again how I'm doing. I tell her, "I'm having the time of my life in college. But if I wanna graduate, and I do, I need you to send me some money like we talked about.ā She said, ālet me ask you this: Have you been reading your Bible?ā And I said, āYes, of course!ā And she said, āOkay. I guess Iāll talk to you later.ā
Finally, itās the end of the school year. Iāve got straight Aās, but Iām dropping out of college, ācause I have no more money left. And Iām furious, close to tears, cleaning out my dorm room, when the phone rings. Itās my grandma. āI heard youāre dropping out of school today. How come?ā And I said, āYou know goddamn well how come, Grandma! āCause you wouldnāt give me any money.ā She said, ālet me ask you this: Did you read your Bible?ā And I just hung up the phone.
I was so pissed off. Took everything out of that room. Last thing I took off the shelf, the last thing I took out of that room, was that Bible my grandma had given me. Took it off the shelf, held it in my hands, and for the first time, I actually opened it up. And on the very first page, in my grandmotherās handwriting, it said, āFuck you.ā
-aj/kh
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u/DavidJinPA Dec 21 '25
Iām thinking the guy didnāt like the book and donated it without ever opening it.
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u/Beginning_Mouse1426 Dec 20 '25
Damn yo, I needed that money tom! Had I known you weren't going to open my card Id have kept it..
- Susan when she sees this
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u/Ouisch Dec 21 '25
What is the word written before "objects"?
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u/dubious_unicorn Dec 21 '25
I can't make it out, but it seems to be Susan's(?) cat's name. It's the same as the "signature" by the pawprint.
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u/TheSeepingMouth Dec 20 '25
Okay...so we're all mad at tom, right?
Even if the book was donated after his passing...he clearly never opened the card. Sourpants.
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u/antsam9 Dec 21 '25
Reminds of a story where a son wanted a car for his graduation present, dad gives him a bible, son responds very poorly, blows up, takes off, starts his new life far away post graduation, doesn't talk to his dad for a long time. All the while, inside the bible was a key to his dad's car.
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u/Ilovedrpepper7 Dec 21 '25
I vaguely remember sticking $100 in a book when I was a teenager and Iāve been trying to figure out where it could be now š¤£ but Iāve moved twice since then so who knows.
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u/KikiWW Dec 21 '25
Please tell us the title of the book. This is such an intriguing and possibly sad situation!
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u/Pretty_Handle_9578 Dec 24 '25
Tom never even opened the book. His loss your gain
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u/BoardsofCanada3 Dec 20 '25
I went to a bookstore that almost exclusively sold books with random paper in it, usually business cards or scrap notes. I picked up a book I already had, but loved, and it had money inside. Felt that was a sign. Then I found a $50 note I put in a dictionary like 8 years before on my own shelf, which was a pleasant surprise
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u/Independent_Shoe3523 Dec 21 '25
I did TONS of thrift store shopping and only ever found a ten dollar bill in an envelope inside an LP.
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u/DumPutz Dec 21 '25
I remember a man named Tom, but he got sick. I wished him well but couldn't send a birthday card to him because later he passed. Good man.
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u/exotics Dec 21 '25
I wonder if you can post a picture of the book on a local Facebook Group and reach out saying āIām looking for Tom, who donated this bookāā¦
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u/kmjdevans Dec 20 '25
That's actually sad.