Your luck can wait for you anywhere: in a pile of old stuff, at a flea market, while redecorating, in your backyard, or even in the middle of a field. Luck comes unexpectedly and in the most unusual ways.
We will tell 7 stories of people who accidentally found things that made them rich.
The Accidental Millionaire
7. A wall of Coins
There was an old house in the town of Windber, Pennsylvania, that had been abandoned for more than 20 years.
One day, local children entered the house while playing and found several old coins near one of the walls.
The children told their parents what they found. The parents decided to break the wall, and when they did, hundreds of coins fell out of it.
According to the calculations, there were $8,500. Among the common coins, there were some rare ones that were issued between the years 1793-1857. They were valued at $ 200,000.
6. Gold
In Ballarat, Australia, a local farmer walked with a metal detector through the desert lands around his house. When the device detected something, he started digging.
He immediately found small pieces of gold. He continued digging and found a huge piece of gold that weighed 5.5 kg and was worth $ 315,000.
Surprisingly, this area has been explored many times, but nothing special has been found there. This is how the nugget looked.
5. A Royal Opal
Another lucky man from Australia found the rarest opal in the world. During one of his working days, a miner named Bobby (he prefers to hide his last name) found a large shiny opal at the bottom of a bucket with common stones.
The man decided to keep it as a souvenir. He only showed it to an expert after 14 years. It looked like 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. This is how this rare opal looks.
4. Envelopes With Money
In 2009, a Cleveland builder named Bob Kitts was redecorating his school friend Amanda Reece’s house.
He was dismantling the old tiles in the bathroom when he found 2 metal medicine cabinets full of envelopes with money inside.
The envelopes were addressed to the P. Dunne News Agency and contained $ 182,000.
School friends were happy with the discovery but disagreed on how to share the money. Amanda offered Bob 10%, but he asked for 40%.
They disagreed and were forced to go to court. P. Dunne also discovered the case, and as a result, the court divided the money equally among all parties to the dispute.
3. A lost Hammer
In 1992, a British farmer named Peter Whatling lost his hammer. In order to search his premises thoroughly, he asked his friend Eric Lawes, who had a hand-made metal detector.
In the first few minutes, Lawes found a large silver coin. He started digging where he found the coin and found a wooden box with a gold necklace, jewelry, and hundreds of coins.
Archaeologists have called this discovery “Hoxne Hoard“. Its original value is estimated at the US $ 15 million. All the artifacts were donated to the British Museum.
Eric received a $ 2.3 million award, which he shared with his friend. However, Peter Whatling never found his hammer.
2. The Declaration of Independence
A Pennsylvania man bought a painting for $ 4 at a yard 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 appeared to be one of 25 official copies of the Declaration of Independence made in 1776. It later sold at auction for $ 2.4 million.
A similar story happened to Michael Sparks of Nashville. He bought a copy of the Declaration at a local thrift store just because he loved the way it looked.
He paid $ 2.48 for it and long after he bought it decided to show it to the experts. It seems that this was also one of the copies made 184 years ago. It was later sold for $ 125,000.
1. The Gold Of British Lords
Amateur archaeologist Terry Herbert once asked his friend (a farmer from Staffordshire, England) to allow him to search his fields with a metal detector.
He had hoped to find a few coins. On the first day of searching, they found 4,000 artifacts weighing 4.5 kg in total.
Archaeologists discovered that the treasure belonged to 12th-century British lords, commanders and religious figures of the XII century and was probably a kind of sacrifice to the gods. The treasure was estimated at $ 5.3 million.
You can read the full story of the treasure here.
Have you or your friends found something like this? Share your stories and photos with us in the comments.
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