There was an old house in the city of Windber, Pennsylvania that had been abandoned for more than two decades. One day. Some local kids entered the house while playing and found several old coins near on the walls. The kids went and told their parents about their find, so the parents decided to break apart the wall, exposing hundreds of coins.
According to their calculations, there were $8,500 worth ordinary coins. This wasn’t all though! Among these ordinary coins, there were some rare ones that were issued between the years 1793-1857 – they were valued at $200,000.
2. Gold
In Ballarat, Australia, a local farmer was walking with a metal detector on desert land around his house. When the device detected something, he started digging. He immediately found tiny pieces of gold. He continued to dig and eventually found a huge piece of gold that weighed 5.5 kg and was worth $315,000.
3. The Declaration of Independence
A man from Pennsylvania bought a $4 painting at a garage sale. He wanted to use it to decorate his house, but when he went to change the frame, he found a document attached to the back of the painting. It turned out to be one of the 25 official copies of the Declaration of Independence made in 1776. Later, this document was sold at auction for $2.4 million.
Another lucky guy from Australia found the world’s rarest opal. During one of his workdays, he found a big sparkling opal at the bottom of a bucket filled with ordinary stones. The man decided to keep it as a souvenir, and when he showed it to a specialist, 14 years later, he was told that he had found an incredibly rare black opal.
The stone was named “Royal One,” and according to experts, its original cost at auction was $3 million.
5. A Lost Hammer
In 1992, a British farmer by the name of Peter Whatling lost his hammer. In order to try and find it, he asked his friend to use his hand-made metal detector. In the first few minutes of searching, Lawes found a big silver coin. He started digging in the spot where he found the coin and then found a wooden box with jewelry, and hundreds of coins.
Archeologists named this find “Hoxne Hoard.” Its original worth is estimated at $15 million. All the artifacts were given to the British Museum. Eric was rewarded $2.3 million, which he shared with his friend. However, Whatling never did find his hammer.
In 2009, a builder from Cleveland (Bob Kitts) was redecorating the house of an old school friend (Amanda Reece). He was dismantling the tiles in the bathroom when he found two metal medicine chests stuffed with envelopes full of money. They contained $182,000.
The two friends were happy about their find but couldn’t agree on how to share the money. Amanda offered Bob 10%, but he wanted 40%. They couldn’t agree and were forced to go to court. P. Dunne also found out about the process and, as a result, the court shared the money equally between all parties.
7. The Gold of British Lords
Terry Herbert, an amateur archeologist, once asked his friend to let him search through his field with his metal detector. He had hoped to find a few coins, but during the first day of the search, they found 4,000 artifacts that weighed 4.5 kg in total.
Archeologists figured that the treasure belonged to the British Lords, commanders, and religious figures of the XII century and were most likely sacrifices to the gods. The treasure was estimated at $5.3 million.
