I went to an estate sale this morning and while digging through a bunch of file cabinets in the home office, I ran across a ton of "root" that looked like ginger. I asked someone working the sale what it was and they "confirmed" it ... sorta ... they also THOUGHT it was ginger. I wondered why it would be in the office and not the kitchen, but I didn't think much of it. Then as I dug deeper through some drawers in a filing cabinet, I ran across a drawer full of newspaper and magazine articles (prolly 20-30 of them) about the people who used to live there (now deceased). They were experts on ... and growers of ... high quality ginseng! I don't know squat about ginseng, but I do know it's kinda valuable and people get arrested for harvesting the stuff in the woods. Ok ... that's about my total knowledge about the stuff.
I then asked the people putting on the sale how much they wanted for the ... ummm, ginger root. They said, "How 'bout two bucks?" So I snatched it up. Now I'm kicking myself in the butt for not reading through a couple of those articles and jotting down the names of these "experts in their field" so I could do a Google search and learn a bit about them. It also may give me a clue to just what KIND of ginseng this stuff is.
Anyway, I have a big Ziplok bag (1/2 gal?) of dry root and a jar (1/2 gal?) of a coupl'a HUGE roots in, what I assume is, water. (clear liquid anyway)
Can anybody tell me what I have here? Can I sell it? I just got home and haven't had time to research it, but I did a quick scan and there is some offered on eBay ... some for super big-time bucks, and some for not so super big-time bucks. How do I identify this stuff? I would assume if they were "experts in their field" ... it's most likely the "good stuff".
Any guidance? Should I get excited ... or should I yawn?
ginsengroot 001.JPG ginsengroot 002.JPG