- [Speaker] It's easy to
accidentally throw away something you didn't mean to. Keys, cellphone, maybe even a piece of jewelry. I know I've dumpster dived for a few things I didn't mean to toss. Fortunately I've never accidentally chucked a tire stuffed with money, a £300,000 ring, or multi-million dollar painting. Prepare to be amazed and horrified by these top 10 most expensive things ever thrown away. - [Voiceover] Amazing. - [Speaker] Number 10: Giuseppe Pedrazzini is a name that doesn't sound familiar
to many people nowadays. Except to aficionados of classical music. He was a famous violin maker in Italy in the early 20th century. Fast forward to a few years ago, when a man hoping to find his wife a violin located one at a garbage dump. He thought it looked old and took it to the Antiques Roadshow to find out if it was worth anything, in the hopes he could use the money to buy a better instrument. However, he changed his mind after learning that the trash heap violin was made by Pedrazzini and was so prized it was worth $50,000. I bet that was music to his ears. Number nine: A Missouri woman named Carla Squitieri took off her $400,000 ring while washing her hands and wrapped it in a towel for safe keeping while it dried. Later, her husband was cleaning the kitchen and tossed the towel, unaware that it contained the ring. Sadly, neither of them realized it until after the trash had been collected. Initially told there was nothing the trash collection service could do, the couple appealed to their small town's mayor and after that a trash collection employee was able to get the truck diverted. After that point, Carla and her husband dug through a mountain of trash and eventually found the ring. Elsewhere, a woman named Anna McGuinn was super careful with her $10,000 ring. When she realized she
had it on in the shower, she asked her husband, Brian, to put it somewhere safe so it wouldn't accidentally fall down the drain and that was good thinking, almost. On his way to toss out a razor, he took the ring with him and eventually tossed it, too. They didn't realize it until the next day after the trash was collected. Brian had to suit up
in protective clothing to dig through garbage at the county dump. And he eventually found his wife's ring. After a very thorough cleaning, it's now back on her finger. Number eight: The idea of accidentally throwing away a tire sounds a little far fetched. After all, it's not exactly something small you can throw away without
even thinking about it. Those things are heavy and you're probably not going to move one without meaning to. Workers doing maintenance
along Highway 70, outside of Indianapolis, found a large tire on
the side of the road. Upon closer inspection, they realized it was actually stuffed with five and 100 dollar bills. In fact, the stash in the tire added up to $100,000. How someone managed to throw that away without noticing, I have no idea. But the next time I see a spare tire along the road, I might just take a quick look at it. Number seven: As a senior compliance inspector at the Pinellas County Department
of Solid Waste Operations, Alex Crawford finds some very unusual things at the dump. Once, he saw a leg sticking out. Having watched a lot of crime shows, I probably would have thought it was a dead body and called the cops. But Crawford soon realized it was a prosthetic leg someone accidentally threw away, somehow. He charges people $100 for the privilege of digging through the trash for lost items. One man came out ahead when he found his $400 false teeth. But the real winner was a woman who had somehow managed to throw away $57,000 in payroll checks. Well, actually, her employees were the real winners here. Number six: Jason Salto was living in Manhattan, at the time his mum, Susan, decided to clean out the closet in his old room. He planned to visit for Mother's Day. So Susan cleaned out the closet in his old room, thinking she was getting rid of old clothes and bedding. She left the trash bags for a local charity called Amvets and thought nothing more about it. But on Mother's Day, Jason realized she'd tossed the bag containing his childhood baseball card collection. It's included some
Roger Maris rookie cards from 1958, that can go for more than $3,000 on eBay on a good day. Other cards were also valuable and the family believes the collection was worth
between five and 10,000. Sadly, mum really struck out when
she cleaned that closet. When contacted, the charity said the cards must have been resold. I guess at least the
money went to charity. Number five: Silicon Valley is home to many large tech companies including Apple. And also a recycling
firm called CleanBayArea. One day a woman brought in several boxes of old electronics. She said she'd found them when cleaning out the garage after her late husband died and declined to leave her name. Several days later, employees sorting through the boxes found an Apple I. A rare, early Apple computer. It's so rare only about 200 were produced. As they were hand-assembled by founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne. After confirming it was the real deal, CleanBayArea sold the prized possession for $200,000. They said if the donor ever came back they'd give her half, as they split proceeds with people who donate valuable items. Number four: A Massachusetts man named Kevin Donovan was in the habit of buying scratch off lottery tickets and losing. One day, he tossed a handful in the trash. Not realizing one was actually a winner. Along came Edward St. John, an 83 year old who stayed active by collecting old scratch off tickets from the trash. Hey, everyone needs a hobbie, right? It turned out, one of the tickets was actually a million dollar winner. Donovan claimed the ticket was rightfully his but the Lotto Commission ruled in St. John's favor, saying only possession was required to cash in a ticket, not proof of purchase. Donovan died shortly after and his children tried to sue St. John, who ended up settling to
avoid a long court battle. In a similar situation
in Little Rock, Arkansas, a trash picker who found a million dollar lotto ticket was sued, not only by the person who threw it away but also the store owner who claimed there were "No Trash Picking" signs on store property. In the end, only the lawyer stuck it rich on that one. Number three: Diamonds are so bright and sparkly, it's easy to be blinded. Maybe that's what's happened to the jewelry store employees who accidentally tossed $5,000,000 worth of them in the trash. A security guard later found them, and he wasn't too bright either. Instead of socking them away and waiting until everyone forgot about the lost diamonds, he tried to sell them on the black market. And promptly got caught. Number two: On the other hand, honest people sometimes benefit from dumpster diving. A New Yorker named Elizabeth Gibson, saw a 38 by 51 inch painting sitting by the curb with some other trash and decided to take it home. One day she was watching Antiques Roadshow and learned it matched the description of Tres Personajes, a painting valued at $1,000,000, that had been stolen 20 years earlier. There was a $15,000 reward offered, so she returned the painting. Police never figured out who left the painting on the sidewalk. And the building manager said the trash was collected 20 minutes after she snatched it up. Speaking of valuable odds, a cleaner at an Italian gallery tossed the sculpture by Paul Branker, valued at $15,000. To be fair, the sculpture was shaped like two dust bins, as the artist wanted people to think about the environment. I hope, at least it got recycled. Number one: In 2009, an I.T. worker
named James Howells had mined 7,500 Bitcoins on his laptop. During the early days
of the cryptocurrency. Mining basically means that James set his computer to solve complex mathematical problems, in return he received Bitcoin tokens. Which back then were worth only around £20 in total. The Bitcoins were stored on his hard drive and he forgot about them, eventually throwing away the hard drive after his girlfriend complained that the laptop was getting too noisy while working out the problems. When I checked recently, one Bitcoin was equal to $2,593.93. Multiplied by 7,500, that comes out to more than $19,000,000, lost in a landfill. Now that's an expensive bit of coin. His hoard can only be accessed using a private key or digital code. But the problem is, that information is only stored on his laptop's hard drive. He raised money to go look for it in a landfill site but the hard drive has not yet been found. If you happen to come across it though, James said he'll be happy to split the treasure because you'll still need his help, since the code is encrypted. Have you seen a shining example of something expensive getting tossed in the trash? (bouncy music) Let me know in the comment
section down below. Also, if you enjoyed this video, please make sure to like it and subscribe. Click on that bell icon to never miss another video. Thanks for watching.
