There are hundreds of examples of chance discoveries that have changed lives, so it's best to get a good look at ordinary relics you may have lying around.
In many cases, people living in a house are unaware of the hidden treasures around them. Sometimes, they’re relics that can change lives, as the story of the seemingly innocuous doorstop shows us. An elderly Romanian woman had been using a strange doorstop for decades to make it easier to get in and out of a room. Of course, it wasn’t an ordinary doorstop.
The elderly woman and her doorstop. It was 1991 when an old woman died in Colti, a village in southeastern Romania. She had found a 7.7-pound stone in a creek bed several decades earlier and used it as a doorstop ever since, not knowing where it came from.
After her death, a relative inherited the house and noticed the strange rock. It was a huge nugget of black amber, also known as Romanian amber. The rock wasn’t just any just piece of amber, it was the largest piece of amber in the world. It was estimated to be between 40 and 70 million years old, and valued at more than $1 million.
The woman’s heir sold the doorstop to the Romanian government, which now classifies it as a national treasure. This is a fascinating story, although, as I said at the beginning, it’s not unique.
The doorstop that was actually a meteorite. A decade before the elderly Romanian woman died, a family bought a farmhouse in Michigan. Among the household items was a 22-pound, metallic-looking stone. For decades, the family used the rock for the same purpose as the old woman: to keep the door from closing.
They didn’t know that their doorstop had great value. After analyzing the strange artifact, they discovered it was a meteorite—and not just any meteorite. It was a particularly rare metallic one, weighing about 22.5 pounds and composed of nickel and iron. The Smithsonian Museum confirmed the find and valued the piece at around $100,000.
A lucky renovation. Renovating a home can be one of the worst experiences for a homeowner. But there are exceptions, like what happened to this couple from Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. Two years ago, they were lucky enough to find 18th-century gold coins under the floorboards of their home. This treasure has an estimated value of £250,000, or about $330,000.
The kitchen painting that turned out to be a masterpiece. In Compiegne, France, a woman was about to sell her house but took her belongings to an appraiser to get an idea of their value. The man was shocked by a painting hanging above the electric stove in the kitchen. The woman lived with a lost 13th-century work by the Florentine artist Cimabue. Later, an auction house sold it for $26.8 million.
The million-dollar chess piece. In 1831, someone found a medieval chessboard with pieces made of walrus ivory on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. However, five pieces were missing from the set. Two centuries later, one appeared. A family in Edinburgh discovered that one of their chess pieces, which had been in their home for years, belonged to that set and was worth $1.2 million.
The attic with a surprise. In some homes, attics are often long-uninhabited spaces. In Toulouse, France, an attic full of toys, watches, and clothes had been collecting dust for years. But in 2014, the owners found something among the junk they planned to throw away: an original painting by Renaissance artist Caravaggio. The price tag for the painting is between $114 million and $171 million.
The ring that was no trinket. In the 1980s, a woman bought what she thought was a fake diamond ring at London’s West Middlesex Hospital. She paid only $13 for it and wore it almost every day for 30 years, keeping it in a drawer in her home. In 2017, she decided to take it to an appraiser. Though the woman chose to remain anonymous, her story is transcendent, as the ring was a 26-carat diamond. She sold it for $800,000.
It’s not a plate, it’s a Picasso. A Rhode Island woman bought a ceramic plate in 1970 for less than $100. What did she do? She hung it on the wall above the kitchen stove, where it collected a good layer of grease and dust for years. In 2014, however, she took the strange dinnerware to the mythical TV show Antiques Roadshow. Until then, she didn’t know that she owned a 1955 Madoura plate designed by Picasso.
A fortune to cover a hole. And finally: here’s one last reminder to examine every nook and cranny of your home. Years ago, a man bought a painting and some second-hand furniture on the cheap.
He used the painting to cover a hole in one of the walls of his house. However, a decade later, while playing Masterpiece, he discovered that he was looking at a work by the 19th-century American painter Martin Johnson Head. In 1999, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston paid $1.25 million for the painting.
Image | Antiques Roadshow
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