- Hi, you know, if you're like me,
you probably throw more away than you actually keep,
kind of like an anti-pack rat, but you might want
to think twice after you watch this.
Here are 10 pieces of trash that turned out to be treasure.
Number 10 are Ansel Adams photos.
In the Spring of 2000, construction worker
and artist Rick Norsigian bought a set
of 65 old glass photo negatives
of Yosemite National Park for $45
at a garage sale in Fresno, California.
The original seller had bought them in 1940
from a salvage sale in Los Angeles.
Norsigian kept them in boxes under his pool table
for four years before finally moving them
to a bank vault when he realized
that they might actually be worth something.
And guess what, he was right.
It turned out that the negatives belonged
to American photographer Ansel Adams,
who's famous for his black and white landscape photos
of the American West.
After six months of examination by teams of experts,
they were deemed to be early work by Adams
taken between 1919 and 1930.
For decades the photos were thought to have been destroyed
in a fire at his studio back in 1937,
which is one reason that they were given
a conservative value of $200 million.
Oh, I'm going garage sale hunting, excuse me.
Number nine is piano gold.
On November 21st of 2016, a piano tuner
in Shropshire, England had the best day at work
he possibly could have when he found
a horde of gold hidden inside a piano.
Martin Backhouse was called to Bishop's Castle
Community College to tune a Broadwood upright piano
that had recently been donated.
It didn't take long for him to discover
seven cloth packets bound with leather string
containing 913 gold sovereign
and half-sovereign coins hidden beneath the keys,
making it the largest collection
of gold sovereign coins ever found.
Now, the coins only had a face value of 773 pounds
at the time, but today they're worth,
drum roll, 500,000 pounds.
The piano was made in the early 1900s,
and the coins date back to 1847
to somewhere around 1915, but whoever hid them is a mystery.
Meg and Graham Hemmings had owned the piano in 1983,
but donated it to the school in 2016
after deciding to downsize,
meaning they don't have any rights to the treasure
that they had in their living room for over 30 years.
That's unfortunate, I'll tell you right now, though,
if that was me, I would go full Thomas Crown Affair
on their ass and you would never see me again.
I would just take the gold and I would be
on an island somewhere where you could not find me.
Number eight is the Lombardi sweater.
If you don't mind rummaging through piles
of old clothes, you can get some really good
vintage finds at a thrift store.
I'm gonna pop some tags.
And in 2014, Sean and Rikki McEvoy
definitely proved that to be true.
At a Goodwill in Asherville, North Carolina,
the couple found an old West Point football sweater
and paid just 58 cents for it.
Later, while watching a documentary
on the legendary American football coach,
Vince Lombardi, Sean noticed a sweater worn
by Lombardi in his early days looked a little familiar.
One of his early coaching jobs was at West Point
U.S. Military Academy, where he worked
from 1948 to 1954, before he joined the NFL,
where he went on to coach the New York Giants
and the Green Bay Packers.
McEvoy was right to think the sweater looked identical
because it was the exact same one.
After giving his a closer look,
he found a tag with "Lombardi 46" sewn into the collar.
On February 21, 2015, he sold the sweater
for over $43,000.
Yeah, hi, Goodwill, can I come just ransack your place?
How much is it for everything, like five bucks?
Yeah, I'll be right there.
Number seven is a painting in a couch.
Trying to furnish an apartment as a student
on a budget is not an easy thing to do,
which is why some German students decided to see
what they could find at a flea market in Berlin.
They got a deal on a pull-out coach for only $215,
but their luck was just beginning.
When they got the couch home, they discovered
that the couch came with more
than just loose change and gum wrappers.
Stashed inside was a Venetian painting
from the 17th century.
The painting, called Preparation to Escape to Egypt,
was an oil on shale painting and measured 10 by 15 inches.
It was done by an anonymous artist
who would have been close to the Venetian painter,
Carlos Saracini, and would have been painted
somewhere between 1605 and 1620, so it was ancient.
It was sold in October of 2007 for over $27,000.
The student who found it was kept anonymous
by the auction house, Kunst Kettler,
which is not a big surprise because for sure
you'd be the one buying drinks for everybody
right up until you graduated.
Number six is Billy the Kid.
In the summer of 2010, Randy Guijarro was
at Fulton's Folly Antique Collective
in Fresno, California and paid just $2
for a cardboard box with two old photographs in it
and a four by five inch tintype photograph
of people playing croquet.
Guijarro didn't realize the tintype was anything special
until a week later when he looked at it
under a microscope and recognized one of the men.
The hat and the way he was leaning on the croquet mallet
were all giveaways that this was actually a photo
of the iconic outlaw, William Henry McCarty, Jr.,
better known as Billy the Kid.
It shows him with members of his gang, the Regulators,
taken in the summer of 1878 after a wedding
in Chaves County, New Mexico.
A team of experts spent a year researching every detail
of the photo before coming to the conclusion
that it was really a picture of Billy.
If you're wondering why this is such a big deal,
it's because this is only the second photo of him
ever to have been authenticated
and was valued at $5 million.
Number five is an Egyptian bike rack.
Back in 2000, the staff at God's House Tower Museum,
a British archeological museum in Southampton, England
had to stop using their bike rack
when two visiting Egyptologists realized
that their bike rack was actually a priceless,
ancient Egyptian statute.
The statue was believed to be at least 2,700 years old
and depicted the Egyptian King Taharqa.
He was the third king of the dDnasty 25
from 690 to 664 B.C. and was known for building temples.
It's an extremely rare example of Kushite art
that originated in what is now Sudan.
The 27 inch tall statue made of granodiorite
had been kept in the museum's basement for nearly 100 years,
and the staff had been leaning their bikes against it.
The statue was, of course, moved out of the basement
of the museum, but they still don't know how it got there.
The only record that they have of it was a receipt
back from 1912 when the museum opened
for a Mr. Williams, who donated an Egyptian figure.
Well, that priceless Egyptian figure has rust
and probably poop and paint smears on it, just ew.
Poor Egyptian king.
Number four is who the (bleep) is Jackson Pollock?
Back in 1992, Teri Horton, a retired truck drive
from California, went to a thrift store looking
for a gift for a friend.
So as a joke she spent $5 on large abstract painting.
After a good laugh, her friend gave it back
because it was too big to fit in her house.
So Horton put it out at her yard sale,
but changed her mind when a local teacher told her
that she might have an original painting
by the American painter Jackson Pollock,
to which she replied, "Who the bleep is Jackson Pollock?"
Horton is still trying to have the painting authenticated
and even had a documentary made about it.
Teri and her supporters, including forensic experts
and art historians, think it could be worth
50 to a hundred million dollars.
She did get an offer for two million for the painting,
but turned it down since it could be worth way more.
For years she's been on a crusade to prove
that the work is real, but the art establishment
is not an easy group to convince.
Number three is an Andy Warhol sketch.
In 2010, British businessman Andy Fields from England
was in Las Vegas when he made the purchase
of a lifetime at a garage sale.
Fields bought a bunch of paintings and drawings
done by the author and artist, Gertrude Stein,
for $5 apiece, but when he returned home
and was having the works framed,
Fields found out that he had gotten way more
than he bargained for.
Stuck in with Gertrude Stein's work was a drawing
by iconic pop artist Andy Warhol.
The drawing was of Rudy Vallee,
an actor and singer from the 1930s.
The work was signed, Andy Warhol,
and is believed to have been done in the late 30s
when he was only 10 or 11 years old.
Warhol, who was born Andrew Worhala,
didn't change his name until 1949
and also didn't sign his early work,
but experts believe he probably signed it later on
and had it certified as a legitimate original
valued at 1.3 million pounds.
So there you go, you never know
when art is gonna be worth something.
Personally, I'm gonna start drawing stick figures
and put them on eBay, 500 bucks apiece,
and they might be worth a lot more later, so hit me up.
Number two is a Ming Dynasty vase.
Back in the summer of 2007, a family in New York
spent the day checking out some local yard sales.
One of their finds was a small white bowl
that they had got for $3.
Now, that might seem like a lot to pay
for a simple, old looking dish that was only
about five inches, but that's until you find out
just why it looked a little worn around the edges.
After having the bowl on a shelf for a while,
the owners got curious about its origin.
They were amazed when they had it appraised
that the bowl was actually at least a thousand years old
and dated back to the Chinese Northern Song Dynasty.
The bowl was an incredibly rare example
of early Ding pottery,
which was utilitarian in look and use.
It was put up for auction with Sotheby's,
who estimated it would sell for $200 to $300,000.
But after a long bidding war between four buyers,
the bowl ended up selling for over 2.2 million.
Yeah, I'm going to some yard sales.
And number one is the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah, yeah, that declaration.
The Declaration of Independence is considered one
of the most important documents in history,
and an authentic copy is worth a lot,
and that's what one lucky anonymous buyer found
at a flea market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania
back in 1989 when he purchased a painting for $4
just for the frame.
But while taking it apart, he found a copy
of the Declaration of Independence
hidden behind the canvas.
It was one of only 24 copies made on Independence Day,
July 4, 1776.
It ended up selling at auction in 1991
for over $2.4 million.
But that's not the only copy worth big bucks.
In 2006, a man named Michael Sparks bought
what he thought was a cheap souvenir for $2.48,
but wound up getting over 477,000 for it.
And in 1990, Tom Lingenfelter spent $100
on a copy that he thought was from the 1800s.
But it's more likely that it was the first print
ever made from the original, worth 100 million.
Anybody else just want to quit their job
at this point and just go treasure hunting
at like Goodwill and yard sales?
Hm, makes you think.
Thank you guys for watching this episode.
I really appreciate your attention.
On the right you'll find two of my most recent videos
that you can press or click right now
if you'd like to watch some more.
And other than that, I will see you this Saturday
with a brand new 50 amazing, not animated, facts.
I'll see you guys then.