$20,000 from a single phone call.

It's true, it happened to my neighbor, and both of us have a hard time believing it.

He rents the house next door from a man who does no maintenance at all.

You may have a landlord like that, it can be frustrating for the tenant, but in this case, it was a windfall of epic proportions.

Due to the lack of maintenance, the gutters overflow and, in heavy rain, water sometimes runs down the inside walls.

Now Milton suffers from emphysema, so the growth of mould and the dampness in his home affect his breathing.

After several trips to the hospital and the lack of response from his landlord, he and I decided to do the repairs ourselves.

After preventing future overflows, we tackled the mould problem.

That's where we found the little black book with all its pages stuck together. That's what happens when you store books in damp places.

Talk about curiosity.

What was this book doing behind the wall?

What was in it?

How the hell would we find out?

Was it valuable or historic?

Would it turn out to be some tradies notes about jobs done and to be done?

I knew that attempting to separate the pages would more than likely destroy them from previous efforts, and I had no idea how to avoid that.

I did know someone who might though, so I made some inquiries on Milton's behalf after completing the wall repair.

Poor Milton, the smell from the fresh paint was causing him nearly as much problem breathing as the mold had, but fortunately that wouldn't last long, and I knew a neat trick to speed up the odour eradication.

Did you know that cutting open a potato and leaving it on a bench will absorb bad smells in a couple of hours? It's faster if you buy hot chips and leave them to get cold. Don't eat either of them though.

As it turned out the contact, my wife's librarian friend, did know someone who could sort out our little problem with the book, for a fee.

It only took a week and a small amount of cash before he got a very excited phone message to call around and pick up the book.

Boring.

A week later, I was again helping him out, but this time to clear out the potting shed in the yard.

Milton had spotted some rats in the yard and wanted to clear them out.

He thought that he had seen them go under the door of the potting shed and the hunt was on.

Whenever you move pots, wood or sheets of anything, you keep a watchful eye out for spiders and snakes in Australia.

Not everything is dangerous, but it pays not to take unnecessary risks.

The rats did have a home in the shed's back corner, so it was a successful hunt.

Rats sometimes collect shiny objects.

No-one knows why they do it because they can't eat them and what they collect usually doesn't make good nesting material.

Out of curiosity, we dug up their nest but found nothing of interest, or so we thought.

There were a few coins, which are always of interest to me as I collect those that I get in change that are different from usual.

All collectors have some idea of the valuable coins but don't expect to see one except in some wealthy person's collection.

Value is based on rarity, as you would know.

Milton was washing the dirt of some of the more encrusted coins when he asked, "What's a 1930 penny worth"?

Most Australians would know that a 1930 penny does have collector value.

"That depends" I replied, "what condition is it in"?

He handed it over, and I got my first look at a 1930 penny in reasonably good condition. My hand did shake a little. This was a treasure.

"Mate," I said, "you might have just paid the rent for the next few years."

"Are you going to hand it over to your landlord"?

"No way", he replied, "I told him we were going to clear out the shed and asked what we should do with what was in there."

"He told me to chuck out anything I couldn't use and that I could have whatever I found."

"I'm not even going to tell him we found this or he might change his mind."

How do you sell something like this without it getting into the news feed?

You don't go to the pawnshop, that's for sure.

A few Internet searches later, we found a local collector who was always looking for exciting coins.

We took some photos and emailed him.

Less than 2 minutes later the phone rang.

You guessed it. The collector offered $20k subject to confirmation that it was genuine.

Everything worked out just fine, and Milton is a very happy man.

No mold, no rats, all repair costs and his rent covered for two years.