Family heirlooms may have quite a lot of value as far as money is concerned, but they also have a lot of sentimental value.

In today’s story, a man’s son sells a family heirloom, and now he’s really upset.

Let’s see why this family heirloom was so special…

AITA for being angry at my son for pawning an important family heirloom: the watch my father wore throughout his civilian career and in Vietnam?

My father was a Captain for Pan American World Airlines. In the early sixties, he purchased a Rolex GMT-Master through a company program. This gives it official Pan Am provenance, which is very important to its value, I’ll get to that later.

An air force reservist, he was called up to serve in Vietnam.

Before he was due to ship out, my mother secretly took the watch off his night stand and had it engraved at local jeweler: “Fly safe, come home. Love – [her name].”

The watch became a good luck charm.

He actually thought he had lost the watch until she surprised him with it a few days later. She wanted it to be a good luck charm during his war service.

Family lore says that it was, as the one time dad says he forgot to wear the watch, he had a very close call with a surface-to-air missile.

He wore the watch every day thereafter, taking it all over the world, until I got engaged.

Before my wedding, he took me aside, and said that since I was starting a family I would need all the luck I could get, and gave me the watch. I got married wearing it, you can see it several of my wedding photos.

OP passed the watch on to his son per his father’s wishes.

Before his death, my father asked me to continue the tradition and give the watch to my son for his 21st birthday – he didn’t want me to wait until he got married, “kids take longer to get hitched these days.”

I want to make it clear how big of a responsibility and gift this is: when I went to insure the watch I had to buy a separate policy to my homeowner’s insurance and it was appraised at $100,000.

Anyway, I gave him the watch on his 21st birthday. I told him to be careful where he wore it, but to wear it job interviews, on dates, etc. as good luck charm as his grandpa would have wanted, and to treasure it.

I never brought up the value except to tell him that if he needed help covering any insurance premiums, that wouldn’t be a problem, and that he should insure it ASAP.

His son sold the watch.

A week ago, six months after I gave him the watch, I found out he sold it to a pawn shop for $11,000.

That’s the market value of like a newish GMT-Master with no history.

He explained to me, only after the fact, that despite the fact that his grandfather’s trust, and me and his mom paid for his education, he had racked up $8000 in credit card debt while at school and was going through a Dave Ramsey program to get rid of his debt.

He said he didn’t feel right owning a luxury item like a Rolex while having that debt, and he felt it was only right to sell it and get out of debt.

OP’s wife has taken their son’s side.

I told him that while he was still my son, I would never forgive him for selling a part of our family history, and to make matters worse, selling it for a fraction of its value and basically getting ripped off.

I told him not to expect any further financial support, which is ironic, since, if he had just been honest about the debt I would have happily helped him pay it down.

He isn’t speaking to me, and my wife has taken his side, we almost never fight and she called me a jerk since “he didn’t know better and was just trying to be responsible.”

It’s really too bad his son didn’t talk to him about the financial situation before selling the watch. I’d be upset too. The sentimental value, that his son doesn’t seem to appreciate, is priceless.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader suggests trying to buy back the watch.

This reader also suggests trying to buy the watch from the pawn shop.

Another person calls the son “selfish.”

Another person thinks his son must have had other expensive things he could’ve sold instead.

He really should’ve talked to his dad about it first.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.