When Michigan machinist Jim Sands set out on a bike ride with his children a few years ago it was just an ordinary day. That is until he came across someone in the neighborhood cleaning out the contents of an old house. Jim asked permission to look through the stuff and started poking around. A very large piece of pottery caught his eye. He bought it for $4.00 and returned later with his car to pick it up.
When Jim arrived home, his wife Melissa did some on-line research and found that her husband`s junkyard find was indeed a treasure. She determined that the piece was Roseville, a make of pottery that had been highly collectible in the Ohio area during the first half of the twentieth century. The couple later sold the piece on eBay for $4700.00
In 2006, Michael Sparks of Nashville Tenn. Purchased an 1820 copy of the Declaration of Independence from a local Thrift shop for $2.48. The piece has an estimated auction value of between $250,000 and $350,000.
In 1993 Gail and Jay Harley went to a garage sale in Orlando where they purchased a box of old sheet music. They found out later that the yellowed sheets were from the Civil War, and were worth thousands.
In 2005 a Nebraska woman bought an old chair at a garage sale. When she got it home she found $3500.00 stuffed in the cushion.
A Philadelphia man bought a print in an old picture frame for $4.00 and discovered a copy of the Declaration of Independence behind the print. In 1991 the copy was sold at auction for 2.42 million dollars at Sotheby's. This same copy was later auctioned off again. It was purchased for a staggering 8.14 million by television producer Norman Lear.
In 1998 country store owner Sumner Richards found a cigar box full of old photos at his grandmother`s house while visiting one day. Because he liked one particular photo of a mining scene so much, she gave him the entire box.
The box sat untouched in his home until 2001, when Richards cleaned up the mining scene photo and put it an a shelf in his store with some other knick-knacks .
Shortly after displaying the photo an antiques dealer came in and told him that it was a daguerrotype (the product of an early form of photography) After receiving several offers for the photo ranging from $ 500-$5000 dollars, he figured that he had better do some research.
After speaking with someone from a prominent auction house the piece was put up for action in 2002, bringing in $42,200.00
