12 Most Amazing Treasures Found By Accident

there's a bargain hunter in all of us you never know what secret treasures might be lurking in a thrift store in an attic or down the back of your sofa an innocuous purchase you made years ago for a few dollars might turn out to be worth thousands today every story you're about to see in this video has one thing in common they're valuable and wonderful treasures found bought and sold in the most remarkable circumstances every car that enters mass production was once nothing more than a prototype and if you can find one of those prototypes hidden away somewhere it can make a valuable acquisition take this pair of Centurion do cheveux cars as an example the tpv prototypes were tested on the furtive Adame circuit in Lloret lawar in france in 1939 and then when they're testing duties were over they were consigned to a barn and buried under bales of straw that's where they stayed until 1994 when they were discovered by accident as the barn was being cleared out a crane had to be summoned to lift them out through the barns roof carefully but once they were outside and could be examined properly Centurion staff were amazed to find that they were in such good condition they were still wearing their original tires they went on to be stars of the Paris retro mobile car show in 1998 and would likely be worth millions of dollars today if citria never decided to part with them dan dotson is best known for being the star of the television show storage wars so you'd have thought that he would know better than to sell a storage unit cheaply without checking what was inside but he did Datsun sold a unit in Indio California after the owner of the unit had failed to maintain payments on it he only got $500 in return for it the new owners quickly found a safe inside their unit and when they opened it up they got the shock of their lives it contained seven and a half million dollars in cash from there things got complicated the original owner of the unit contacted an attorney and the new owners of the safe and the cash found themselves facing a difficult legal dilemma to avoid going to court they accepted an offer of 1.2 million dollars to return the unit and the rest of the cash to its original owner some people might see that as this six million dollar loss but we think 1.2 million is a pretty good return on a $500 investment you might have heard of the Schmidt family they make treasure-hunting their family business and they've had some pretty impressive successes over the years but none as amazing as the collection of 51 coins they found while diving off the coast of Florida in 2015 the coins came from a 300 year old Spanish shipwreck and included an ultra rare coin called the Tri Centennial Royal which was minted specifically for Spanish King Felipe v that coin alone is worth half a million dollars and accounts for half the value of the entire haul as well as all the coins they also managed to recover a solid gold chain more than 40 feet long unfortunately for them they don't get to keep the full value of their fine state law means that some of the money has to be shared with the Floridian government so it was a good day for the politicians and officials of Florida when the treasure was found - back in 1992 a sugar cane plantation worker in Colombia accidentally drove his tractor into a hole in the ground that had suddenly opened up in front of him he had no way of knowing it at the time but he discovered the hiding place of the long-lost male Ghana treasure instead of reporting it to the authorities he pocketed some of the gold items he'd found in the hole and walked away but he made the mistake of telling some friends they told their own friends and the malla Ghana gold rush began tragically that led to the loss plundering and desecration of countless tombs and artifacts belonging to a previously unknown Colombian culture it's suspected that many of the items were melted-down for gold but that doesn't take away from the beauty and wonder of the artifacts that we still have the site is believed to be around 2,000 years old making the people who buried their dead here part of the Kalima culture of the time we know little about them but their gold and silver work is incredible that last story was one of an ancient treasure but here's a much more modern tale of an accidentally discovered fortune when Canadian Gregorio De Santis finally gave in to his sister's insistence that he should clean out his closet and throw away his old junk he came across a coat that he hadn't worn in a while deciding to check the pockets before he threw it out he found a lottery ticket and you can probably guess what happened next he checked it to find out if it was a winner and it transpired that Gregorio was the winner of an unclaimed 1.35 million dollar lottery prize from 10 months earlier he'd bought the ticket in his native Montreal in December 2017 and then simply forgot about it if it hadn't been for his sister it might still be there now Gregorio plans to use the money to fund his retirement but we expect that he bought his sister an expensive thank-you gift to some metal detectorists spend years scouring fields looking for something valuable and never find anything at all other metal detectorists strike it lucky on their very first day there's a three year old boy in Hockley England who might just be the luckiest metal detectorists of all time James Hyatt had only been using his instrument for a few minutes when he got a positive response from beneath his feet and called his father Jason his 34 year old dad helped him to dig eight inches below the ground and they unearthed a solid gold reliquary the container dates back to the early 16th century and would have been used to contain religious relics possibly even the ashes of someone close to the reliquaries owner it's so ornate with its carving of the Virgin Mary on one side and three hearts on the other that it's thought it may have even belonged to someone in the house of King Henry the the treasure has been valued at just over three million dollars which will be split between the Hyatt family and the landowner when it's sold we have no idea who donated this beautiful antique Chinese vase to a thrift store in Hertfordshire England but they probably spent everyday cents cursing their poor judgment the thrift store is likely to be quite upset - they sold it for a little more than a dollar but it's true value is more than half a million the pretty yellow vase has been identified as the property of the Queen long emperor which means it would have been made somewhere between 1735 and 1796 the rows of the Emperor's family is clearly marked on the side of the vase which should have meant that it stayed inside the Royal Palace so how it came to be in England so many years later is unknown after having the vase professionally valued the lucky thrift store shopper who wishes to remain anonymous had it auctioned unsurprisingly it was bought by a wealthy collector in China and so it's now finally gone back home a woman walking to work one morning in Manhattan found that a painting laying on a pile of trash caught her eye and she just knew she couldn't leave it lying where it was her name was Elizabeth Gibson and she made the right call she can't really explain why the painting had such an effect on her but if she hadn't stepped in and saved it from the trash the world would have lost a priceless Rufino Tamayo masterpiece worth 1 million dollars the painting is called trace personaje s-- and was completed by the mexican artist in 1970 to give the story a twist it was stolen from a warehouse in 1987 and that was the last anyone saw of it until the day it got thrown out in 2007 police believe that whoever ended up owning it realized the piece was stolen and threw it away to wash their hands of it kind-hearted Elizabeth tried to return it to its original owner but the owner decided to sell it and split the proceeds with her she got her reward when Thea Jordan from ham Shire England took her jewelry box to a valuer in 2011 it was because she wanted her engagement ring to be assessed for insurance purposes through her annoyance the valuer appeared to be far more interested in a pink orange topaz brooch instead to Thea the brooch was a $20 purchase that she'd thought little of and allowed her four-year-old daughter to play dress-up with the valuer immediately recognized it for what it really was though part of a 19th century tiara once worn by a Russian Zarina all 27 of the clear stones surrounding the centerpiece were actually diamonds and the Topaz stone is flawless and weighs 20 carats the vibrant pink shade marks it out as an imperial stone of the type that was reserved exclusively for the use of the Russian Royals of the era her daughter was sad to lose her plaything but Thea understandably cashed in on her lucky find and sold it for just under fifty thousand dollars if you had something incredibly valuable that you didn't want anyone else to find where would you put it a safe perhaps a storage unit how about a freezer that was the approach taken by an eccentric senior citizen in Wiltshire England and the extent of her valuable stash only came to light after she passed away the woman was a hoarder and in piled her ramshackle home high with piles of possessions from her long life the paint was flaking off the walls and the house was rotting away but when her freezer was opened it was found to contain a sixteenth and seventeenth-century treasure trove worth more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars the most valuable single item was a Renaissance era gem and enamel pendant with a value of $40,000 but there was also a sapphire and Ruby pendant from 17th century Italy worth $20,000 the items are stored with their original receipts to prove that she was the rightful owner and the freezing process hadn't damaged them at all nor the frozen leg of lamb that was right next to them Laura Stouffer was just another thrift store shopper looking for a bargain when she came across an attractive print that caught her eye the print was of the 19th century painting shepherds call by Walter hunt a picture of a collie dog that had always been a favorite of Laura's she paid a few dollars for it and took it home she didn't much care for the frame that it came in so she took it off to replace it with one of her own when she did something far more valuable was revealed an original poster for the classic movie All Quiet on the Western Front from 1930 realizing that there's always a market for classic movie memorabilia she quickly had her painting appraised and was understandably delighted to be told it was worth $15,000 she was even happier with the final sale price at auction it outperformed a testament and went for $18,000 nobody ever said that stumbling across valuable treasure is always a glamorous pursuit and nobody knows that better than thai fishermen genres Thien chaat who made himself rich by finding a massive chunk of solidified whale vomit in 2018 whale vomit is called ambergris and contains a substance called Ambreen Ambreen is heavily sought after by perfume manufacturers because it helps the scent of perfume last for a longer time than it would without the piece found by John Roos weighed 14 pounds and had washed up on a beach in koh samet he suspected it was ambergris but waited almost a year to contact the authorities because he was afraid they would steal it from him luckily for him they didn't instead they confirmed that his chunk of smelly wax was the real thing and he's now on his way to selling it for an estimated three hundred and twenty thousand dollars it would take him eighty-six years to earn that amount of money working as a fisherman subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and you will be the first to know when a new video comes out thank you for watching and see you in the next video

Channel: Inforado

Views: 262,566

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Keywords: 12 Most Amazing Treasures Found By Accident, treasures found, valuable found, ancient gold, gold found, found by accident, discovered by accident, amazing discovered, valuable treasure, 12 most, top 12, most amazing

Id: 6h-5zaJ7xZ0

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 01 2020