Goodwill Grenade: Live Explosive Discovered In Box Of Donated Items

A Goodwill grenade was the last thing management of a Winston-Salem store expected to find when they opened a box of donated items.

But that was exactly what the Goodwill officials discovered this week, prompting a panicked call to police who determined that the grenade was indeed live and very dangerous.

The incident happened at a secondhand store on 528 Waughtown Street. After store employees found the Goodwill grenade, they called the Winston-Salem police department, who dispatched the Hazardous Device Unit to investigate.

They determined that the Goodwill grenade was live, but were able to get it out of the store without any injuries. Police later detonated the grenade safely.

The story follows a trend of strange finds in Goodwill stores. Last year, a North Carolina woman paid $7.99 for a Nintendo game called Stadium Events that turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime purchase.

Though it may look like any other NES game churned out in the 1980s and early 90s, Stadium Events is actually considered the Holy Grail for game collectors, with only 200 copies ever released to the public. Collectors believe that only 10 complete editions of the game still exist today.

Game experts said the find was worth about $10,000.

Another Goodwill shopper from North Carolina made an even bigger find. A woman looking for a canvas to use to paint a cat portrait purchased a painting for $10, but decided to do some investigating and learned that what she actually purchased was a painting by Ilya Bolotowsky called the Vertical Diamond.

The woman later sold the $10 Goodwill painting at auction for $27,000.

Oddly enough, the Goodwill grenade found in Winston-Salem this week isn’t even the first time an explosive has turned up at a store in the North Carolina city. Another hand grenade was found at a different Goodwill location in 2010, though that one was inert and had no actual explosive materials.