Many of the bills and coins found by Fred Murray have been organized into binders for shipping off to Eastern Canada. (CBC)

A Winnipeg man has uncovered a cache of old currency stashed in the basement ceiling of his home during a renovation project.

Fred Murray bought a bungalow in the city's Elmwood neighbourhood last spring and recently decided to tackle a basement project, spurred on by the federal government's home renovation tax credit.

When he encountered trouble feeding an electrical wire through the ceiling, he started to remove the panels.

That's when he found the cash and coins packed in cloth bags, pill bottles and tobacco cans.

"The oldest coin I found was from 1859. It was a penny," Murray said.

'The oldest coin I found was from 1859. It was a penny.' —Fred Murray

The find included Canadian money and foreign currency from Germany, China and the United States. There was also a large number of foreign stamps in paper envelopes.

He took his find to local collectors but said there wasn't much interest, so he plans to send everything to an auction house in Eastern Canada.

"It's all getting shipped off. I have no intentions of keeping it, and no one here in the city seems to be serious about it," he said.

"So I am shipping it off to Quebec and from there it goes to Toronto. And then it will end up in an auction."

Murray has no idea what kind of payment he might get from the sale of the collection but he plans to reinvest it in his renovation project — where it came from in the first place.