- One man's trash is another man's
million-dollar lottery ticket.
- Let's talk about that.
(jaunty intro music)
Good mythical morning.
- They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure,
and today we're gonna prove it.
- We've done some digging on some people who've done
some digging and now we're going to show you
what we've found, or actually what they found, as we do,
as we do, what the?
- As we do
- [Rhett] Hey man, what the heck is in that trash can?
- I don't know what the heck is in that trash can.
- Tell me - Let's find out,
back in 2015 Carla Squitieri of Clarkson Valley, Missouri
realized one afternoon her wedding ring was missing.
Now she retraced her steps, which is a good thing to do,
she realized the night before she took her ring off
and wrapped it in a paper towel in the kitchen,
woke up the next morning, and then threw away
the paper towels on the counter,
forgetting that the ring was in there.
She told her husband Bernie, I probably just tossed
it right in the trash, along with your marriage Carla
because Bernie paid $400,000 for that wedding ring.
- Carla you can't, we gotta glue this
to your frickin' hand, that's a house.
You don't put that on the counter and forget about it Carla.
- First time you slide it on Bernie,
coat it in Super Glue first.
- Silicone.
- The wedding band. - Yes.
- Wedding ring, so they go out to the trash,
but the thing was it had been taken away five hours earlier,
so they called the trash people, Meridian Waste Solutions,
who told them that the truck was on its way
to a radioactive landfill, where it wasn't safe to search,
you think, but Meridian Waste Solutions diverted it.
Meridian Waste Solutions, proudly diverting trash
from radioactive facilities since 2015.
So the operations manager Joe meets them at this
alternative place, where they start going through
this stuff, this is literally like
searching for a needle in a haystack.
- Right, yeah, not gonna find it.
- Or I mean, even harder than that, but here's what happens,
after 30 minutes of searching, Joe finds the $400,000 ring.
- 30 minutes.
- 30 minutes is all it took for Joe to find it.
It's unknown if Joe was given a reward for his efforts,
but he can rest easy knowing that the Squitieris
are still in a thriving marriage.
And you know what, that's good enough.
No it's not, he diverted the trash and went through
all of it to find a $400,000 ring.
He should at least get like a pinkie ring
that says ring finder.
- Look into that Joe.
In twenty-oh-five, otherwise known as 2005,
83-year-old Edward St. John of Blackstone, Massachusetts
hit the jackpot when he - Blackstone.
- He was digging through some trash outside
of a convenience store called the White Hen Pantry.
The White Hen Pantry, located at 114 Main Street.
No, we're not White Castle, and we don't sell
those little burgers, so please leave.
Edward found a Hold 'Em Poker scratch ticket
worth $1,000,000, one million dollars in the trash.
Now the guy who actually bought the ticket, Kevin Donovan,
wasn't happy because earlier that day he had gone
into the facility, the White Hen Pantry, and bought
every single Hold 'Em Poker ticket, but he didn't realize
that he had the winning number,
and he threw all of them away.
- If you're gonna go through the trouble of buying
every one, I think you would also have a system
to verify that you didn't have the winner.
- Check the numbers.
He didn't do that, but he still was mad enough about it
to say I'm gonna go to court, and claim that
the reward is rightfully his, but according to the law,
a lottery ticket's like legal tender,
possession is all that is required to prove ownership.
- Unless you stole it.
- Just like your herpes Link.
Edward's attorney said you should settle because you're old
and this is gonna drag out in court longer than you have
left to live. - Oh wow.
- In a strange turn of events, though, Kevin Donovan
the guy who threw all the tickets away, who was battling
him in court died of a heart attack.
He went ahead and died.
- He lost the ticket and then lost his heartbeat.
- That's exactly what happened.
So the family continues the court case, it was eventually
settled, Edward takes home $860,000,
and the Donovans take home $140,000.
Old Mr. Edward St. John immediately bought
$850,000 worth of Werther's Originals
and one of those electronic adjustable beds.
- I totally believe that.
- He was in the market for those.
- In twenty-oh-three, Elizabeth Gibson
was on her morning walk through Manhattan's Upper West Side
when she noticed a painting sticking out of a trash can.
She's quoted as saying, even though I didn't understand it,
I knew it had power.
The Insane Clown Posse also said the same thing
when they discovered magnets. - Yeah they did.
- She took it home, and, well here's the painting.
Could you see the power?
- [Rhett] It seems very powerful, lots of red.
- She spent four years trying to find out what it was
and eventually on The Antiques Roadshow website,
she determined that it was Tres Personajes,
translation Three People, you see the three people?
- No, I see some rusty corkscrews and pocket knives.
And I see more than three, but whatever, three people, yes.
- Doesn't look valuable to you?
Well here's the history, it was made by Mexican modernist
artist Rufino Tamayo in 1970, seven years later
it was purchased by a Houston collector for $55,000
as a gift for his wife.
10 years later in 1987, it was stolen from the couple.
16 years after that, in 2003, Elizabeth found it
in the trashcan, if that painting had a lot of power,
I don't know how it didn't stay out of a trashcan.
You know, how much power does it really have?
- I don't know if that's how it works.
- Well, turns out it has a lot, because when
it was returned to the rightful owner,
that's what Elizabeth decided to do,
they sold it for $1,049,000.
Elizabeth received 15 grand as a reward,
and the realization that she could have made
a lot more money if she'd have just sold it herself.
- Yeah, Lizzie. - But you did the right thing.
- Million-dollar paintings are not the only garbage
found in New York, how bout a taxidermized deer?
That's what was found in 2013 at the corner
of 159th and Amsterdam, here it is Link.
- [Link] Gracious.
That's gross, but at the same time, he's like,
he's got this like gangster lean.
- [Rhett] He's pretty cool.
- Put him in a lowrider, and that guy, he looks cool, man.
- Maybe this was intentional,
maybe this was where the deer just was laid to rest.
Local Viola Johnson was quoted as saying,
what the (beep) is a (beep) deer doing up here?
- Good point.
- Great question from Viola, who worked just across
the street at T Entertainment.
T Entertainment, since 1977 proudly managing the careers
of Mr. T, Ice T, and James Lipton.
So the police guarded the deer
until sanitation workers arrived.
- They guarded it?
- They guarded it.
- They didn't want anybody to take it?
- I don't know, one of the cops tried to feed
the deer, but it was stuffed.
Sanitation workers showed up and tossed the deer
in the garbage truck, eventually, and they took it away,
and if you're wondering what happened to the person
who threw it away, I have no i-deer.
- Great work Rhett. - You're welcome.
- 2002, Lisa Mizzaglia - Be here all week.
- Lisa Mazzaglia from New Hampshire
watched a show about paying it forward,
then she was inspired to buy Christmas gifts
for a family in need, it was the Christmas season.
While loading the presents into her car,
her purse was stolen, so lesson learned there.
Fast forward, - Don't do good deeds.
- Fast forward 14 years to last year, and the police
call her, hello, um, Ms. Lisa we have your purse
from 14 years ago that you reported stolen.
Dude named Bo Haines found it.
- Bo Haines? - Bo Haines.
- The Bo Haines? - Bo Haines.
You know him? - I don't know him.
- He found it in a trash can outside of the place
where he worked, the Market Basket.
The Market Basket, located in the same outlet mall
as Store Place, Pants Box, and Dress Barn.
Amazingly, everything was in the purse
except for some cash from when she left it in 2002.
So for 14 years, the thing remained exactly intact,
like a time capsule, it had her wallet, credit cards,
bills, checkbook, work ID, an old cell phone, and a pager.
I don't know what I would do without my pager.
- 14 years without a pager?
- I can't go 10 minutes without my pager.
I want to reach for my pager right now.
- Oh, I'm being paged.
- I know, I'm paging you.
- In November 2013, aspiring actor, filmmaker, and singer
Ismael Cekic, aka Smiley, was walking home
on 28th Avenue in Bensonhurst, New York, when he spotted
a golden statuette in a trash can.
This statuette turned out to be an Emmy, an Emmy Award.
This is what Smiley told the news,
this thing sticking out looks so cool,
I dusted it off, and I'll take this home.
This is also how Smiley chooses his lady friends.
Now the Emmy was believed to be from the 1950s,
and it didn't have the band on it that said who had won it,
so he didn't know who it belonged to.
He also didn't know what it was, he just thought
it looked cool, so he takes it home, he puts it on
his coffee table, and then serendipitously two nights later,
the Emmys come on the television,
of course Smiley's gonna watch the Emmys.
- He's like, he's like, wait.
- So this is again what he told the news, quote,
he's watching the Emmys,
next thing you know, I'm watching the Emmys
and they show an Emmy Award, and I'm looking at
my coffee table, I'm doing backtakes, it's an Emmy Award!
- I always do backtakes when watching the Emmy Awards,
and I don't even know what a backtake is.
Is that like a spit-take backwards?
- I think he meant double take, I think that's
Smiley's way of saying double take.
- I do too.
- So he wanted to return the award once he knew what it was,
so he came up with a genius plan.
He brought it to a screening of his own film,
remember I said he was a filmmaker, Vamp Bikers,
hoping that the owner would show up to claim it.
Great idea, surprise, no one showed up to claim
the trophy, no one really showed up
to watch the movie, either, and if you're wondering why,
here's a clip from Vamp Bikers,
this is called Trailer Number Seven.
- Hmmm, six before this?
- I'm feeling like this whole planet, it's mine.
- Scary.
- We're gonna rain on you vampires.
- Can you believe no one showed up for that?
- Is this anybody's Emmy, huh?
- It looked like lemon juice, the bomb looked
like a thing of lime juice.
- Well that's good, it's safer that way.
- So even after this thing was publicized
that he had found the Emmy, no one turned up to claim it,
so he eventually ended up selling it to fund
his next feature film, not making this up,
Vamp Bikers Two, look for Vamp Bikers Two,
coming soon to a DVD that Smiley will burn for you.
- It's got 24 trailers.
Thank you for liking, commenting, and subscribing.
- You know what time it is.
- Hi, my name's Andrew Brace from Wichita, Kansas,
and it's time to the spin the Wheel of Mythicality.
- For those of you who like words in addition to video,
- I like words!
- We're starting what we're calling the Mythical Monthly,
a short email from us to you to let you know all that's
going on in the Mythical Universe.
Head over to RhettandLink.com/MythicalMonthly to sign up.
- Sign up now, thank you, and click through
to Good Mythical More, where we are gonna play
the crew trash guessing game, garbage from them
that we guess who garbaged it.
- Comment Takeover, that means we're going over
to an undiscovered video and loving it with some comments.
This one is called She Said Okay.
- This is an underwater proposal video,
so we want you guys to leave a Little Mermaid
quote under there, I'm sure that there's some
Little Mermaid quote that will be encouraging, nice,
and appropriate, be your mythical best.
- Thank you for doing that.
Click on the left to watch our show
after the show, Good Mythical More.
- [Link] Click on the right to watch
another episode of Good Mythical Morning.
- [Rhett] And click the circular channel icon to subscribe.
- [Link] Thanks for being your mythical best.