The Two Treasure Hunts of Foffo's Mysterious Accordion

I just sold this beautiful 1950s Cantarini accordion…and the stories that surround it are fascinating.

Many years ago we were clearing out the house of my great aunt and uncle because they had passed away and we were helping clean up their affairs.?They lived like paupers, duct-taping old slippers and collecting piles of coupons….so family members would always help out with money and home goods, but it also just seemed like they were products of growing up during the Depression.

About 5 hours into working in the house, we were shocked as we started to discover treasures hidden all over the place. An old coin collection under the floorboard, a briefcase full of cash in the walls, stock certificates in a hidden drawer…it was a treasure hunt straight out of Goonies. My first official escape room. (An escape room where you win real money! And it all goes to medical bills!)

In the basement we found piles of old newspapers, Christmas decorations, and an application for a radical philosophical society that sounds like wizard school. In the corner was a beautiful turtle shell case that opened up to reveal rich burgundy velvet over a gorgeous accordion with pearly keys and sparkly buttons. After my poor rendition of La Bamba, I knew it had to come home with me.

Cut to 20 years later and I want to let this thing go. I never set loose my Inner Weird Al and so this work of art just collected dust. Someone deserves to play this beautiful Cantarini, so I need to set this creature free. But when I looked up the name, I couldn’t find anything about the brand anywhere. It was hard to put a price tag on this mystery accordion from an old basement. But it’s beautiful and sounds fantastic, so I knew it was definitely worth something.

Eventually I found a Facebook group called Accordion Appraisal & Sale and asked “Does anyone know anything about this accordion?”

Out of nowhere, a woman named Joanna shared this magical response:

“Rodolfo Cantarini. Settled in New York. Did not manufacture. Sold from Castelfidardo Italy, under many different names. He was also Best man at my parents’ wedding and godfather to my sister. We called him Foffo. When he would come to town he would bring calamari in tomato sauce for my mom. He was a wonderful man.”

What a surprising backstory to something I just had sitting around! While that personal connection didn’t put a specific price on my Cantarini, it gave the accordion real value. This is no cut-and-paste squeeze box. Rodolfo Cantarini was Best Man at Joanna's parents' wedding! He was a wonderful man.

This gave me what I needed to find a buyer from another Facebook accordion group (who knew??), and as soon as I sent it off, I started getting contacted by people for all kinds of different things, totally unrelated to the accordion.

Multiple projects that had been stalled for months suddenly started moving forward, people I hadn’t talked to in ages contacted me with opportunities…all within hours of shipping my Cantarini to Europe. It was like Rodolfo himself was so happy to go back to his continent that he unleashed a calamari-in-tomato-sauce-like energy blast out to the world in gratitude.?

Fly free my sweet Foffo!

So in that same spirit I would like to say thank you to Aunt Honey, Uncle Joe, Accordion-related Facebook Groups, Joanna, Nicolae (who eventually bought it) and of course the legend himself, Rodolfo Cantarini.?May we all play the right chords at the right time and find treasures everywhere we look!