I am always mystified and intrigued by synchronicity and in my line of work, I hear some amazing stories. People reconnected after years of searching, letters found in floating bottles reunited with the the heirs of the intended recipient, people in casual conversation that find out they are related either through friends or through family. While these mystifying correlations are not unusual, I relish finding them as much as any collector would a prized addition to her collection.

So it was a big surprise when a new client showed up yesterday with a photograph of a home he very recently bought and is in the process of lovingly restoring to it’s former glory. The photo is antique and depicts the home around the time it was newly built in the 1920s. The home was custom-built by an entrepreneur who founded a soft-drink company, Delaware Punch. Unfortunately like many entrepreneurs of that time period, his estate was affected by the Depression and he was forced to sell the home.

When my client purchased the home a few months ago, he did some research and learned about the origin of the home. When he hired his general contractor to renovate the house, he explained the history to the contractor. The contractor then hired a sub-contractor to do some metal fabrication to match new gates to the originals and one evening the contractor was having dinner with the sub-contractor and his fiance. I’m not exactly sure where they were but they noticed a piece of Delaware Punch memorabilia. The sub-contractor’s fiance says to the contractor, “did you know that his great-grandfather was the founder of of Delaware Punch?”

(This is where the story really gets interesting.) The contractor turns to them and says, “you’ve got to be kidding! The house we are working on was built by the founder of Delaware Punch. You are working on your great-grandfather’s house!”

After much astonishment the sub-contractor later went to visit his grandmother (the daughter of the Delaware Punch founder) to ask about this story where she produced a photo album that has this original photograph in it. And here we are today, restoring the photograph as well as this beautiful house. I just love the irony of this story!