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Chapter 6 of 14

Chapter 6 — LOT 1147

By Mavenlus Desk · 2026-08-29

I did what I do for a living.

If you are an American and you have ever moved, changed a bank, closed an insurance policy, or had a relative die untidily, there is a reasonable chance a state government is holding something of yours right now.

Illinois holds more than five billion dollars in cash, securities, and physical property that belongs to somebody who does not know it.

The office is the State Treasurer's, the programme is called I-CASH, and it is free, and it is searchable, and almost nobody looks.

Part of what is in there is the contents of safe deposit boxes.

When a box goes untouched for about ten years and the bank cannot find the renter, the bank drills it, inventories it, and surrenders what was inside to the state.

The state holds it, advertises it, tries to find the owner.

And then the state sells it.

Coins, watches, class rings, war medals, a Rolex, a Mike Singletary rookie card — they auction it, and these days they do it online, and the listings are public, and so are the historical ones if you know how to ask.

I have made a career out of knowing how to ask.

I filed a records request on the second of April and I sat with it for three weeks and then a man named Ruben Ocampo in Springfield, who has been doing this since before it was digitised, sent me a scan of a page out of a 1997 sale catalogue.

Illinois State Treasurer, Unclaimed Property Auction, February 1997.

Lot 1147.

*Ring, yellow gold, floral form, red cabochon stone, interior engraving. Est. $200–300.*

Realised: three hundred and forty dollars.

And in the buyer column, in a clerk's hand, abbreviated the way clerks abbreviate:

*D. KEANE, CHICAGO IL.*

Keane.

My mother went to that auction under her own name, four months before she stood in her kitchen and told me the name was mine.

All chapters
1. Chapter 1 — THE GIRL WITH THE ROSES 2. Chapter 2 — WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER 3. Chapter 3 — WHAT I THOUGHT IT MEANT 4. Chapter 4 — THE INSIDE OF A RING 5. Chapter 5 — MY MOTHER'S VERSION 6. Chapter 6 — LOT 1147 7. Chapter 7 — TEN YEARS UNTOUCHED 8. Chapter 8 — THE ADDRESS ON THE NOTICE 9. Chapter 9 — WHAT $340 BUYS 10. Chapter 10 — THE NAME 11. Chapter 11 — EVERYTHING WITH MY NAME ON IT 12. Chapter 12 — TESS 13. Chapter 13 — HELD IN PERPETUITY 14. Chapter 14 — TWO RINGS