Lucky Discoveries That Made People EXTREMELY Wealthy
Getting rich isn't easy, but for a lucky few they somehow stumbled upon hidden treasure. Here are the top 10 lucky discoveries that got people rich.
Getting rich isn't always easy. Some are born into it, some work hard, and some use their talents in investing. Then some got lucky. Here are the top ten lucky discoveries that got people rich.
1. The Wall Of Coins
Some children were exploring a house that had been abandoned for over twenty years in Windber, Pennsylvania, and found a small pile of coins in the hallway. As they moved through the house, they found a hole in the wall. After opening up the hole in the wall, the children were showered with $8,500 in coins. The best part was that many of the coins were collector's items, so their actual value totaled at $200,000!
2. Australian Gold Nugget Find
In Victoria, Australia, a man was doing a usual sweep with his metal detector when it went off. To his surprise, he found a record-breaking, twelve-pound nugget of gold. That's just over $300,000 worth of gold! What's so strange about this find is that this was a standard spot for metal detecting and would have been explored hundreds of times before. Another man working in a mine found a $750,000 nugget of rare royale one opal the day before he retired.
3. The Third Imperial Egg
A man in the midwest made his living in buying metal and selling them on for scrap. He bought a golden orb for $14,000 and was hoping to make a small profit by re-selling it. Instead, he got it professionally appraised and it turned out to be one of just fifty original Russian Fabergé eggs which was previously thought to have been destroyed. He sold it at auction for $33million!
4. Hidden Medicine Cabinet
A builder was helping his friend refit their bathroom. While he was smashing the walls, he found two medicine cabinet chests hidden in the wall, which were full of envelopes. Each envelope contained a $50 note, totaling $182,000!
5. The 1974 D-Penny
A mint employee left his son a small coin collection in a sandwich bag. After twenty years, he got the coin collection appraised and found the D-penny, which was made out of aluminum as it was part of a test batch. It was one of just ten coins ever made and the only one left in existence, worth $250,000.
6. Attic Painting
A painting that was originally appraised as a fake Van Gogh was found in an attic, over 100 years after it was put up there. It turned out to be real, the sunset at Montmajour, and worth $50million!
7. Comic Books
Action Comics Number 1 was published in 1938 and features the debut of Superman. Only around 100 exist and a top condition copy is worth $2million. A man in Minnesota bought an old derelict house for just $10,000 to renovate and found a copy in the insulation of the wall.
8. On The Hunt For A Hammer
A farmer in England lost his hammer so he asked his neighbor if he could borrow his metal detector. They didn't find the hammer but they did find over 1000 gold coins, gold bracelets, silver busts, and a gold necklace. It became known as the Hoxne Hoard of Roman riches and is valued at $15million!
9. The Declaration Of Independence
A man in Pennsylvania bought a painting at a garage sale for $4 so he could use the frame. Under the painting was an old document, which turned out to be one of 25 mint condition copies of the Declaration of Independence from 1776. He sold it for $2.4million. Imagine the surprise of the person who sold the painting at the garage sale!
10. Free Shares
The craziest one on the list is another garage sale find. A man in California bought a mystery box of random documents for $5. When he sorted through the papers, he found a stock certificate for 1625 shares in the Palmer Oil Company. It was issued in 1924, and since then Palmer had merged several times with other companies, until, finally, they were bought by the Coca Cola Company. When he went to his lawyers, they told him he now had 1.8 million shares in Coca Cola, worth roughly $130 million, making the man the largest non-institutional shareholder in the firm. Unfortunately, Coca Cola has a lot of lawyers and they dismissed the claims and called the share certificate fake so the man never got to live his dream of striking lucky and becoming the owner of Coca Cola.
Have you ever found anything valuable by accident? Let us know in the comments!
