Photo via Expressen
Curt Degerman was a man who kept to himself. Around the town in
Sweden where he lived, he could be seen riding his bike or rummaging
through trash bins, collecting bottles and cans to be recycled,
and eating leftover scraps of food. Like some might assume from his
humble lifestyle, Curt never completed school, married, or had a family
of his own. So, when he passed away in 2008 at the age of 60, many
thought that Curt left little behind — but that couldn’t be further from
the truth.
According to the BBC
Brasil, when it came time to sort through Curt’s estate, it
was discovered that he had amassed a fortune totaling nearly $ 1.4
million, leaving it all to a cousin who was kind enough to visit him
occasionally in the years before his death.
What no one knew was that, after making the rounds to collect
recyclables from trash throughout the city, Curt spent hours in the
local library pouring over financial newspapers. Over the years, he
became an expert on the stock market, investing the modest sum he earned
from recycling in stocks and mutual funds, valued at close to a million
dollars.
Despite being more readily associated with glass and aluminum, Curt
also owned 124 bars of gold. That, plus the house he lived in, put the
recycling scavenger’s total worth at nearly one and a half million
dollars.
Sadly, after Curt died of a heart attack and his secret wealth was
revealed, his extended family fought for a piece of it. Although he
left his entire estate to his cousin, his 92-year-old uncle brought the
matter to court claiming the money was rightfully his. Recently the case
was settled out of court under unreleased terms.
Stephen Messenger is a correspondent at TreeHugger,
where this post originally appeared.
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