Gold trash, a gift from the past, and other treasures that have been found in very strange places

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Usually, when it comes to searching for hidden treasures, one immediately sees the wreckage of huge ships at the bottom of the ocean or the explorers who have finally discovered the legendary golden city of El Dorado. It turns out that even ordinary people can find untold treasures almost anywhere in the world, literally "under their feet", in the most ordinary places.

1. Gold trash

Life for a janitor is almost never easy, and choosing such a career is unlikely to become a millionaire. But for one sanitary worker in South Korea, someone's trash has become a treasure. In April 2018, a janitor at Incheon International Airport changed a bag in a garbage can and found gold bars wrapped in newspaper at the bottom. They cost 70 million won or $ 64,807. This officer (who wished to remain anonymous) turned in the find to the police, as he suspected that the gold bars were most likely related to some kind of crime.

In South Korea, there is a law that states that anyone who takes a found item to the police has the right to get it back if there is no owner of this item within six months. There is also an act that states that even if the original owner came for their gold bars, the janitor would still receive 5 to 20% of the total value as a reward.

2. Always double-check

The Serezo family had a very difficult period of life, associated with a whole series of tragedies. In 2012, their 14-year-old daughter Savannah Serezo died, and in 2015 the family lost their home to debt. Most people who buy lottery tickets are eagerly awaiting the results of the draw, but Ricardo Cerezo simply bought lottery tickets every week out of habit, without checking the numbers.

Before her death, Savannah gave her parents a beautiful box of cookies. Ricardo kept it in memory of his daughter, so he kept all of his lottery tickets and other valuables in this box. After a pile of tickets had accumulated over several months, Serezo's wife threatened to throw them away if her husband didn't clean up. After that, Ricardo took all the tickets to his local gas station for a worker to check on the Internet. It turned out that on one of the tickets the man won $ 4.85 million.

3. Unique taste is worth a lot

Sometimes, when you look at the exhibits in a museum, you think: “how could THIS be exhibited and called art”. Ben Nicholson is just one of these artists, whose work is not understood by everyone. In his most famous works, he simply painted blocks of different colors, and sometimes painted landscapes and made sculptures. In 2015, a woman named Joe Haven accidentally saw a painting of horses, deer and houses in a store.

Despite the fact that the painting looked like it was painted by a schoolboy in MS Paint, Haven recognized the "handwriting" of the English artist Ben Nicholson, because her mother was an art teacher. Considering that Haven had a rather strange taste, she acquired the painting for herself, not knowing that it was worth anything. When the woman returned home, she was shocked to learn that the piece was very valuable. She eventually sold the canvas for £ 4,200 ($ 5,691) at auction and donated 10% of that amount to a charity store in Swindon, where she originally purchased it.

4. Between pages

In 2012, a man named Carlos went to the local book exchange center in Marlborough. The program allowed local residents to bring their old books and select new ones for an equivalent amount. When Carlos got into his car with a stack of books, he opened one to flip through the pages. He was shocked to see that a groove had been carved into the pages inside and contained $ 20,000 and other valuables. Instead of keeping quiet about it, he tried to find out who the original owner was, but the book was not signed.

Carlos contacted local media saying that if the real owner sends him an email, he will return the book back. You just had to say the title of the book, the approximate amount of money inside and a list of other values. Nothing is known about the continuation of the story.

5. At the bottom of the sea

Once a fisherman living on the island of Palawan in the Philippines had his boat's anchor caught on something at the bottom. He dived underwater to check what had happened and found the largest mollusk he had ever seen. The fisherman opened the shells, hoping to find a pearl that he could sell to a jeweler. But instead of the usual ball of pearls, he found a huge white lump weighing 34 kilograms inside. It was unlike anything seen before.

a

Since this clearly did not look like a regular pearl that could be used in a necklace, the fisherman decided that his find was useless and simply hid it under the bed for good luck.

Eileen's aunt Cynthia Maggay-Amurao, who worked for a travel company on Palawan Island, was looking for ways to attract more tourists. Her nephew thought that his strange find might be an interesting exhibit and brought the giant pearl to his aunt to display in a display case. In the end, it turned out that the pearl was worth as much as $ 100 million.

6. Sometimes hard work pays off

The Elliots have rented a farm in the English county of Somerset for many years. After decades of hard work, they were finally able to get a mortgage to buy out the farm in 1998. Cousins Kevin and Martin Elliot ran the farm together, so they decided that since the land was now theirs, it was worth taking a walk around the neighborhood with a metal detector to see if there was anything interesting underground.

They knew the site was very old and had been used as farmland for thousands of years. But what was their surprise when they found a whole treasure - 9213 silver Roman denarii. There were so many coins that they had to carry them into the house in buckets. The cousins sold them to the Somerset County Museum for £ 265,000 ($ 358,224, $ 35). This is how the land managed to recoup itself.

7. Fantasy of any poor buyer

Almost everyone who moved into their first apartment had to buy things from a thrift store to furnish it, and hardly anyone would have thought that doing so could make a fortune. In 2007, a college student living in Berlin needed a new sofa and went to a local flea market to save money on a purchase. She paid $ 215 for a pull-out couch.

When she brought it home and laid it out, she found inside a small painting measuring 25 x 30 centimeters. There was no signature on it, and the girl took the painting to a local art auction to appreciate it. It turns out that the painting dates from the 1600s and was painted by a friend of a famous Venetian artist named Carlo Saraceni. The painting was called "Preparing to Escape to Egypt" and sold for $ 27,630.

8. A present from the past

In France, old châteaux (country estates of the aristocracy) are inherited from generation to generation. At the same time, the costs of arranging a mansion or castle far exceed the real cost of the building. Many old homes in aristocratic families remain intact for generations, and they fall into disrepair when children choose to live their own lives in modern homes and apartments, rather than occupy the house of their ancestor.

When one heir (who wanted to remain anonymous) inherited their family home in Normandy in 2016, it turned out that the mansion was packed with antiques. When rearranging the furniture, they found tin boxes covered with a thick layer of dust, inside which were hidden gold bars and coins worth $ 3.7 million. The only drawback was that the owner had to pay inheritance tax after selling the found treasure. Nevertheless, even after that, the money was more than enough to carry out the necessary repairs on the crumbling estate.

9. Securities in scrap metal

Recycling plants accept scrap metal, clean it up and re-melt it for reuse. When Blue Grass Recycling employee Mike Rogers in Burlington was packing up scrap metal boxes, he noticed something green in one of them. These were old American savings bonds, which ranged in value from $ 50 to $ 500 each, for a total of $ 22,000. Someone must have accidentally scrapped the metal container in which the bonds were kept.

After returning home from work, Rogers and his wife conducted their own investigation to find out who was the original owner of the bonds. The only thing that was discovered was that the securities were purchased by a woman named Martha Dobbins and were intended for a certain "Robert Roberts."

Instead of giving up, Mike contacted every Robert Roberts in the country (there were thousands), asking everyone if he knew a woman named Martha Dobbins. When he finally found the right man, it turned out that he was 82 years old, and his mother had died many years ago. She secretly saved up bonds for her son to thank him for caring for her in her old age, but the woman died before she could tell him about it, so the box of money was accidentally scrapped. Just a few days before Christmas, Mr. Roberts received a huge gift that he couldn't even expect.

10. Cherry treasure

As a Swiss farmer was strolling through his cherry orchard, he noticed something shiny in the ground. He started digging and found silver Roman coins. 1700 years ago, there was a Roman settlement in this place in Switzerland, and then this field was also used for agriculture. Fortunately, no houses have ever been built on the ground, so the treasure has remained intact. The owner of the garden called in professional archaeologists to dig up the cherry orchard. As a result, 4166 coins were found. Historians have calculated that this amount of money was approximately equal to one or two years of the Roman's wages.

Unfortunately, this farmer cannot sell the coins, because in Switzerland there is a law that states that such historical artifacts belong to the Swiss people, even if they were found in private property. Thus, the farmer received only the usual reward for the find, and the coins went to the museum.

Continuing the theme of treasures, a story about mysterious treasures of Israel - the history of ancient gold coins, the purity of which was checked for a tooth.