Gold rings, sapphires and a Rod Carew baseball card: Minnesota to auction more than 1,000 unclaimed items

Minnesota is auctioning more than 1,000 items from abandoned safe deposit boxes, a trove of treasures ranging from pendants and bracelets to pocket watches and Morgan silver dollars.

The Commerce Department's two-week online auction begins Sept. 1 and features items from bank safe deposit boxes where the lease for the box has ended.

State law says banks must try to find owners, but after five years, orphaned items are turned over to the Commerce Department's unclaimed property program.

"This auction of unclaimed safe deposit boxes offers Minnesotans the opportunity to discover potential treasures or connect with history through the mementoes of other eras," Jacqueline Olson, senior director for unclaimed property, said in a statement.

Items up for bid include gold and silver rings as well as topazes and other gems. Watches and pocket watches will be auctioned along with old coins, including a gold U.S. dollar from 1853 and a silver U.S. coin from 1852.

State officials say that during an unclaimed property auction in 2013, someone paid $27,500 for a coin dating to 1795.

The coming event includes baseball cards featuring Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett, Pete Rose and rookie cards for Johnny Bench, Roger Clemens and Ken Griffey Jr. Also for sale: sterling silver spoons, tubes of gold dust, a garnet stone ring and miscellaneous foreign currency.

A few wedding and engagement rings are in the mix, too.

"We don't get the stories," Olson said, "we just collect the items."

The Commerce Department is required by law to conduct auctions at least every 10 years. The most recent was in 2019, when items sold for a total of $115,000.

An owner or heir can submit a claim for the proceeds even after the auction is over.

"We want to do it more frequently, to try to help people find lost treasures or try to get proceeds back to the owners," Olson said. "We sort of wait until we have a good collection of stuff to generate interest in an auction — and enough items to auction off."

Beyond the contents of safe deposit boxes, the state receives millions of dollars each year from banks, investment firms and other businesses that lost contact with owners.

The Commerce Department says that in the 12 months ending June 30, it paid more than $50 million to Minnesotans submitting more than 15,000 claims. The total value of unclaimed property transferred to the state during those 12 months was more than $150 million.

An earlier version of this story misstated the price of a 1795 coin sold at an unclaimed property auction in 2013. The story has been updated to say the coin sold for $27,500.