(mysterious music) - [Voiceover] Rummaging through
a garage sale in Tennessee, Michael Sparks purchased
salt and pepper shakers and a copy of the
Declaration of Independence for a total of $2.48. After going home and
examining his purchase, Sparks began to think
that this document was more than a cheap reprint. While what Michael found was not the Declaration of Independence, it was a Congress-ordered
copy from 1820. In that year,
Congress commissioned William J. Stone to
create 200 reproductions of the Declaration
of Independence. It was believed that only
35 of these reproductions were still in existence. Luckily for Sparks, he
purchased the 36th reproduction for less than $3
at a garage sale. After being validated, the
document sold at auction for $477,650. As the last item
illustrated, when something once thought to be missing
or destroyed is found, it dramatically
increases in value. This was also the case
for our next item. Rick Norsigian bought
two small boxes of glass negatives from
a garage sale for $45. He'd even haggled the
price down from $75. After keeping the
65 glass negatives under his pool table
for four years, he decided to get
them appraised. To his delight, these negatives
belonged to Ansel Adams, the father of
American photography. The negatives were thought
to have been destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire
that destroyed 5,000 plates. The negatives were
estimated to be worth at least $200 million. It's likely that the
owner of that garage sale really wishes he
hadn't let Norsigian negotiate him out of that
$25, and not to mention the additional $200
million they're worth. Wanting a nice antique
table for her home, Claire Wiegand-Beckmann,
a retired teacher, purchased a table for $25
at a yard sale in 1998. The table sat in her
home for 30 years before she decided
to get it appraised on the PBS show
Antiques Roadshow. The card table was
from the 18th century and made by Boston
furniture maker, John Seymour and Son. The show appraised the
table to be worth $300,000. All in all, the table
sold for 21,660 times the original price of $25. After her appraisal,
Claire sold her table for $541,500. Our second item didn't quite
reach into the millions, but it was still
a noteworthy sale. Frankenstein memorabilia
from the 1931 movie can be quite popular
with collectors, which is why the discovery
of an original movie poster was such a great find. Found in the projection
booth of a remodeled theater, this movie poster from
the original 1931 movie was valued at between
$100,000 to $200,000. However, when it sold,
the Heritage Auction House in Dallas, Texas, the
final bid was for $358,500. Not bad for an old movie poster. As unlikely a place
as any to find a $1.6 million
piece of furniture is outside the bathroom
of a pizza parlor, but that is exactly
where a long lost 17th century cabinet was found. The Roman Baroque furniture, featuring a picture of the
pope blessing the crowd in Rome was feared
to be lost forever. That is, until the head
of furniture at Sotheby's found it in this highly
unlikely location after looking for it
for nearly 20 years. It's a good thing
Tavella needed to run to the bathroom
while enjoying pizza or it could have been another
20 years of searching. Our next item was a
fairly expensive purchase compared to the
others on this list, but the investment was well
worth it for Ian Coulson. He purchased a four-post
bed on an online auction for about $3,000, but Coulson,
a four-post bed specialist, had a suspicion that the bed
had some greater significance. He approached the TV
historian Jonathan Foyle who confirmed that
this four-post bed was the only
surviving Tudor bed. DNA testing proved
that this bed belonged to King Henry VII back in 1486. This little fact turned
Coulson's $3,000 investment into a $30 million return. While going garage
sale-ing in Las Vegas, British businessman
Andy Fields purchased what seemed to be a child's
drawing for $5three . The drawing did end up
being sketched by a child. Luckily for Fields, however, that child happened to be
pop art pioneer Andy Warhol. Warhol apparently sketched
the drawing at age 10 while on bed rest
suffering from cholera. This depiction of 1930s
singer Rudy Vallee drawn by young Warhol
was later appraised at $2 million. Thinking they bought an
average small piece of China for $3 at a garage
sale, a New York family was surprised when they
had the bowl appraised six years later. The five and a half
inch bowl apparently was from China's
Northern Song dynasty, which ruled China
from 960 to 1127 AD. The only other known bowl
of similar size and design has been in the collection
of the British Museum for over 60 years. This rare bowl was
valued between $200,000 and $300,000, but sold for
$2.2 million at an auction. A 17th century
Japanese lacquer box, known as the Mazarin Chest,
was a masterpiece in its time. The largest of the two
Mazarin golden chests was considered
lost for centuries and the Victoria and Albert
Museum searched for it in order to bring the
two chests together. Not knowing the chest's
significance or worth, a French engineer bought
it for $160 in 1970 and used it as a TV
stand for 16 years. When he retired, he
brought it with him to his retirement community
and used it as a bar. After the engineer's
passing, his family called a specialist
and had it appraised. It was then that the missing
Mazarin Chest was found and then sold for $9.5 million. Cleaning out their recently
deceased parent's house, a brother and a sister in the UK found an old vase
that they thought might be worth a little money. Upon having it
appraised, they found out it was actually
worth a lot of money: $1.7 million to be exact. The 18th century Qianlong
dynasty porcelain piece was put up for auction,
and this is where things got crazy. Over the course of 30 minutes, Chinese buyers
pushed the bidding up to over $63 million, a world
record for that amount of time. Understandably, the
sister almost passed out from the seemingly never-ending
increase of the bids. By the end of the auction,
the final few bidders were increasing their bids
in $1.5 million increments. The piece is believed
to have drawn the highest price for
any Chinese artwork ever sold at auction for a
total price of $85 million. For more Top Lists
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