THE GOLD COIN

As I walked through the church door a heavy, cold, damp smell filled my nose. I remember the room was dark. I think it was mainly because everyone was wearing dark colours like black. My mother and father and I sat in the front row. My mother was crying but you would too if your father had just died.

After Grandpa was buried and the reception was finished we went to the lawyer’s office to see what everyone had been left in the will. The most well off of all grandpas’ children was left ten thousand pounds and he started arguing that it could not have been right. My uncle Joe was left twenty thousand pounds. My mother got grandpa’s house. I was last, but what I got was a shock. To everyone’s amazement it was grandpa’s gold coin. This was no ordinary coin. This one, if sold at auction, would make an estimated four hundred thousand pounds minimum.

Some time later I still could not decide what to do. Should I keep it or sell it? My family had financial problems and had to pay off debts. That money could really help us. Even if mother sells grandpa’s house that would solve the debts, but father has been made redundant and mother never had a well paying job.

Two weeks after the funeral I decided I was going to sell the coin. I went to an expert on gold and he said that I should put a reserve price on it of four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. On the day of the auction, they started the bidding at two hundred thousand pounds. The bidding went up and up, from two hundred thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds, to three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to four hundred thousand pounds, to four hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to five hundred thousand pounds and then it was sold to an American coin collector. My family and I never had any financial problems again.

The End.