Everyone loves a rags to riches story, but for some unsuspecting people, proverbial "rags" actually ended up being worth millions — and they almost didn't realize it.
From the superstitious fisherman who discovered he was accidentally hoarding a priceless pearl under his bed, to the guy who unknowingly bought an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, these people can testify that one man's trash is truly another's treasure.
This woman didn't realize that the plate she had hanging over her oven was designed by Picasso.
A Rhode Island woman bought a ceramic plate in 1970, paying less than $100 for the handsome dishware. She decided to hang it on her wall above the stove, where it collected a healthy layer of grease over the years.
Luckily not even the slick sheen of oven grime could conceal the plate's true origins — in 2014, the woman went to have the plate appraised on the television program "Antiques Roadshow," and discovered she was the owner of a 1955 Picasso-designed Madoura plate worth $10,000.
One man became a millionaire after accidentally purchasing an original copy of the Declaration of Independence at a flea market.
When a financial analyst bought an old painting at a flea market for $4 in 1989, he had no idea that an old copy of the Declaration of Independence was nestled behind a tear in the canvas: he had stumbled upon one of 500 official copies from the first printing in 1776.
Auction house Sotheby's sold it in 1991 for $2.42 million — an unprecedented figure.
"It was far and away the highest price for historical Americana ever," David Redden, the auctioneer, and senior vice president at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, said at the time.
A duo found a treasure trove of classic cars in a 100-year-old barn.
Nine times out of 10, the most interesting thing you'll find in an old barn is a pile of hay — but when these two "motorcar specialists" stumbled upon a 100-year-old barn in rural France, they became the exception to the rule.
Serendipitous doesn't even begin to cover it: the barn was full of $18 million worth of classic cars that a man named Roger Baillon had stored away for safekeeping — and then promptly forgot about.
"This sort of thing doesn't happen often enough," Matthieu Lamoure, managing director of Artcurial Motorcars, said in a press release about the event.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider