Look what I found! (5 treasures found among trash)

A few weeks ago, a reverend at a Catholic university was looking for paper towels in a bathroom cabinet.  He didn’t find any towels, but what he did find will buy plenty extra.  He pulled out a frame with an etching in it.  He liked how it looked and put in on his wall.  Turns out, the etching is a Rembrandt and it could be worth about $100,000.  That’s not bad, but there are other valuable things found by people not looking for them.

Fix a hole in the wall DIY style

A man in Indiana stopped at a yard sale on his way home one day.  He bought a couple items of furniture and a painting he thought his wife would like.  The furniture went into the living room and the painting covered a hole in the wall.  A few years later he was playing an art-themed board game called Masterpiece.  He noticed that one of the cards featured a painting much like the one that was being used for home improvement.  He did a little extra research and discovered that the painting was an original by Martin Johnson Heade, a classical American still-life artist..

The painting was bought by a museum for $1.2 million.

Septuagenarian finds something older than she is

A 72-year-old California woman was cleaning out a section of her home when she came across an old baseball card with a team photo of the Cincinnati Red Stockings.  Not knowing what to do with it, she called a friend to help her list it on Ebay for $10.  When the friend came over to help, she convinced the woman to have it looked at by an expert.  Good move.  The expert identified it as a card from 1869 in near perfect condition.

Deciding to forego Ebay, the woman auctioned it off at Sotheby’s for over $75,000.

Forget the hammer!

A British farmer lost a hammer in one of his fields one day.  Rather than going to spend a few bucks to just buy a new one, the man borrowed a metal detector and set out to find his hammer.  Instead, he found something much more valuable.  What he unearthed was a cache of Roman Empire era artifacts.  To be exact, 15,000 coins of various metals, including gold, as well as  jewelry and statues were all uncovered.

The government bought the artifacts from him for £1.75 million which he generously split with the man who lent him the metal detector.

Car gathered dust for nearly 30 years

A few years ago, the relatives of English doctor Harold Carr were going through his things for an estate sale.  When they went to a barn on the property they came across a car that had not been used since about 1960.  Not knowing what it was, the family called in someone to identify the make and model.  It was a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante with a mere 24,000 miles and all original parts.  Only 17 were ever made, and less are present today.

The car went at auction for just under $3 million.

Independence is worth a lot of money

In Pennsylvania, a man bought a painting at a flea market.  He liked the frame and thought he could restore it.  He took it home and attempted to do so but could not bring the frame back to it’s former glory.  Thinking he had just wasted $4, he took out the painting contained in the frame and found an old folded up piece of paper behind it.  When he unfolded it, he was looking at one of 24 known copies of the Declaration of Independence that was used to spread the news to the colonies on July 4, 1776.

An Atlanta businessman paid $2.42 million for it at auction. (That’s a 60,000,000% profit!)