Family heirlooms are the only way families can share their memories from one generation to the next, so it's a shame that some people just don't seem to appreciate them.
Lots of people look at anything old and see junk, but there's no end to the interesting things you can learn from studying antiques. That's why we're all lucky that someone as enthusiastic about them as Reddit user Oktober75 inherited a real mother lode.
It turns out his great-grandparents owned a shoe store between the 1940s and the 1960s. While his grandparents didn't keep the store running, they did lock the doors and save everything, which lead to this amazing rediscovery in 2009.
Almost everything is left exactly as it was when the store closed, and there are a lot of surprising differences between shoe stores from back then and today.
For one thing, how many shoes do you see that say "Made in the USA" these days?
And these shoes aren't exactly in style anymore either...
Although Converse sneakers are still popular.
And the store was full of other great antiques as well. Like this boot stretcher:
A double-sided wooden bench for trying on shoes:
And this very impressive-looking chest, with old playing cards and some glasses cases inside.
There was also a wood-burning stove in storage.
But what Oktober75 called his "find of the day" was an antique Victrola Credenza. It was still filled with his great-grandparent's record collection from Eastern Europe.
Most of the shoes in the store were eventually sold to a movie company, so you might recognize these shoes in a historical film some day.
Stories like this just prove that one person's junk is another person's treasure!
