Woman was browsing eBay when something familiar caught her attention—it turned out to be a long-lost family charm

Often in life, things that are meant for us find a way to come back to us. A Utah woman named Joan Eccles experienced this firsthand. She was casually browsing eBay when she spotted something familiar, per UPI. The woman wasn’t so sure what it could be but when she took a closer look, the intricate details of the item left her shocked. Turned out, she had a decades-old connection with the item.
Eccles was browsing eBay casually as she often does, per KSL News. The woman found it in her liking to browse items, check out the prices and see if anything seemed valuable or reasonable. One day, while browsing, she spotted a charm that looked familiar. “It said, ‘To my wife,’ and that's what my mother's charm said,” the woman recalled. After further inspection, she cleared all doubts about the charm belonging to her family. The latter goes back to 1944 when the woman’s stepfather Augusto William Conti was serving in New Guinea during World War II. He had customized two charms, one for Eccles and the other for her mom Agnes Inez Redfern.

Both were created using coins and contained the descriptions, “New Guinea, To My Darling Joan, 1944," and "New Guinea, To My Darling Wife, 1944,” respectively. Eccles had held on to her charm for over 80 years. Her mum's, however, was unfortunately lost after her demise in 1963. Just when Eccles thought a precious part of her family was misplaced, she found it listed on eBay. “I mean the same coin, same year, same writing, same design and so I said that's my mom's charm," Eccles’ daughter Stacy Wilson remarked. The woman’s daughters Wilson and Vikki Fredrickson reached out to the seller in California and were determined to get back their mum’s family charm.

“It was just at a flea market, a gal was getting rid of all of her stuff and that was one of the things. A keepsake filled with memories, I mean, it's just traveled from New Guinea to Georgia to somehow you know,” Wilson said. On Mother’s Day, the duo gifted the charm back to the rightful owner—their mother. The family couldn’t be happier to get a piece of their ancestry back in their homes after spending decades thinking they had lost it forever.
The smile on the mom and the daughters’ faces revealed the pure delight of having the nostalgic and invaluable memory. "It's a story of hearts coming back together, where both literally and physically she has a memory back and we have this to continue on in our family for decades, years to come,” Eccles’ daughter remarked. The elderly woman planned to keep the charms carefully in a shadow box, never to lose it again. She also planned to add a note revealing the wonderful story and the elements of love, thoughtfulness and affection the charms held.