Money? Doesn't have to be a lot of cash. Any pre-depression money would still be legal tender, but would also (I think) have collector value as a gold certificate. Back then they still had $1000 bills in circulation too.
Maybe a Babe Ruth rookie card preserved in an empty pack of cigarettes?
I do like the idea of a forgotten picture, whether undeveloped in the holder, a developed neg (maybe a glass plate), or an old print. The key plot surprise could be something that is in the background or something that is absent.
Back in the 1980s, a friend of mine was called in to sort and liquidate the contents of a deceased photographer's studio by the widow. He and a neighbor went through the things and came across an old box of large prints—30 or so. They pulled out a few and found full length nudes . . .which the neighbor began to recognize as 40 year old pictures of women he knew in his childhood from up and down the bloc!.
They just stuffed them back in the box and putthe box in the "Burn Pile".
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