Free sites are great!
Some years ago I 'met' via the genealogy.com, a woman from CA, who was researching Hoyt ancestors in MA/New England. In my effort to help her out, she discovered that a whole batch of items that she purchased on an ebay auction might be somehow related to me or at least belonged tom someone in my neck of the woods so she mailed me the package of items for which she had no relationship.
Neither of us realized that it had been the property of my great aunt and in it were lots of my great aunt's records/notebooks/index cards - this aunt was known to family as that generations genealogist. And for a long period in her life, she helped David W Hoyt with all the correspondance amongst the Hoyt families, in documenting various VR sources all over Massachusetts, for his book(s) about Hoyt, Haight, Hight families. This led to all sorts of confirmations of things I had here and there but hadn't had time to further document, and listed all her sources so I could 'obtain and see' the proof. She must have spent an amazing amount of time traveling to communities and libraries to review vital record books.
Her notebooks also included some recipes for things like 'liver and onions' and remedies for all sorts of itches, bites, gastrointestinal upsets and the like!
And there were a few pictures that I was able to identify as my great grandparents, a letter my ggrandfather wrote to ggrandma during the Civil War, cemetery documents for the North Burial Ground, a list of who inherited what when her mother passed away, item by item: a silver ladel, table linens, cutlery etc. I'll be forever greatful.