10 Unexpected Found Objects
Unbelievable Found Objects
1. Hidden Nazi Memorabilia Stash Found in Argentina
Just outside Buenos Aires, in a hidden room in a suburban home, a secret collection of 75 Nazi artifacts has been uncovered by police. The memorabilia, ranging from a bust of Hitler to weapons adorned with swastikas, are believed to be owned by high-ranking Nazi officials during WWII.
2. 124-Year-Old Never-Worn Levi's Found in Arizona Cedar Chest
They looked like brand-new blue jeans, but Jock Taylor knew those Levi’s sat in an old family trunk for decades – maybe a century. Judging from their size (W: 44, L: 37) they probably belonged to his great-great grandfather Solomon Warner, an Arizona pioneer from the 1800s.
If so, they’re worth a small fortune, says Brit Eaton, a dealer in old jeans who actually searches abandoned mines for inventory.
“Vintage denim can be worth thousands of dollars,” Eaton says. “Finding Levi’s pre-1900 is a massive rarity. That’s the Holy Grail.”
Jock Taylor’s dungarees are featured in the latest episode of Strange Inheritance with Jamie Colby. It premieres Monday, April 3 at 9:30 p.m. ET on Fox Business Network.
The six-foot-six Warner left his upstate New York home and headed west in the 1830’s.
“He was the first to sell American goods in Tucson. The Butterfield Stage came through and whatever you wanted, you had to buy from Solomon Warner,” says Jim Turner, a writer on Arizona history.
Warner died in 1899. Through the generations, his descendants handed down a wooden “heirloom” trunk that bears his name.
“When Solomon’s son passed away it went to his only daughter, then everything that she had went to my mother” says Jock Taylor.
Taylor didn’t know whether the jeans were Warner’s, or added to the chest later. He decided to find out when an antique appraisal show came to town.
Auctioneer Daniel Buck Soules recalls Taylor approaching him.
“Why is he showing me new jeans?” Soules thought. Then he took a closer look.
The jeans had the familiar leather tag, adorning Levi’s from 1886 until today. But the rivets were exposed, meaning they were older than 1937, when Levi’s started covering them with denim.
More clues: suspender buttons indicated they were older than 1922, the first year for belt loops. The single back pocket proved they were older than 1901 – when the second appeared.
Soules dated them to 1893. He thought private buyers would pay dearly for the vintage jeans—or even Levi Strauss & Co. itself, which has bought back old jeans at high prices.
“The last pair of blue jeans that sold from the 1880s, it’s my understanding, were purchased by Levi’s for six figures,” says Soules.
Taylor’s jeans are not as old, but in much better shape – perhaps the oldest unworn pair of Levi’s in existence.
Even still, denim dealer Eaton thinks the 44” x 37” britches are too big for a $100,000 payday. Most of the bidders who drive such stratospheric prices, he says, actually want to wear their vintage jeans.
Are You Know?
10 Unusual Home Mosaic Designs
8 Offensive Articles of Clothing
10 Unbelievable Snowman Stories
3. One man's trash is another's treasure: The still-working $80,000 Steinway piano found abandoned in a tip
A valuable Steinway baby grand piano, worth $80,000 when new, has been found nestled amongst the rubbish at a tip in Western Australia.
Musician Wil Thomas was 'shocked and stupefied' when he came across the still working baby grand piano being played by Tui Warihana, 16, while dumping his garden waste at the Broome site.
'The young guy who was beating the ivories said he didn't have the room for it, so it was down to us,' Mr Thomas posted online.
'It had sustained some damage when it was dumped, but other than that its still in tune and totally playable!'
The piano had been mistakenly thrown out during a clean out at the Cable Beach Club, the ABC reports.
Previous owners also include Lord Alistair McAlpine, advisor to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Upon discovering the hidden treasure, Mr Thomas made a hasty phone call to Don Bacon, a Steinway owner and businessman, to help him rescue the valuable instrument.
4. Talk About Hidden Treasure: $11.6K Babe Ruth Baseball Glove Found In Old Chest In Norway
In case you missed a recent United Nation’s report, Norway is now the world’s happiest country and the USA, sadly, ranks 14th. What’s worse is that contented Norwegians are now even beating us at our own game of finding valuable baseball relics in strange places.
The 75-year-old owner of an apartment building in Trondheim, Norway was cleaning out his storage unit in the cellar. He happened upon a dusty old chest which had remained closed for possibly as long as a century.
Inside was an assortment of pristine, high-end sporting goods, including extremely valuable and rare baseball gloves, baseballs, and an inflatable chest protector— all circa 1920. So far, the six lots have generated $21,325 on eBay, with buyers stretching from Ohio to Texas. The auction for the final piece, a spectacular baseball glove, ends on March 31st. “[The Norway collection] is by far the greatest pre-1940s baseball glove find, bar none.” says Joe Phillips, a hobby veteran who authenticates professional baseball gloves for Heritage Auctions.
Roy Anderson bought the first glove listed on eBay for $2,827, a sensible price given that it's the only one in the world and comes with a box and ball worth $1,000. “I do love fairies and their tales,” said the Texas attorney and professor at SMU’s Dedman School of Law. “I am particularly enamored with the rarely heard tale of a chest in an obscure attic or other building. The owner’s death ensues. The chest is rubbed and treasures pour forth. In this case, no relative ever peeked for generations. My wife Barbara does a lot of estate work. She never, ever has come across a set of relatives that did not go through every piece of paper and underwear the deceased left behind. That’s usually when the magic chest surfaces. Not generations later.”
5. Baseball cards found unopened in attic may sell for $1 million at auction
A Tennessee man made the ultimate baseball-card find recently in his aunt’s attic — hundreds of packs of unopened and forgotten about cards from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Very soon, they could sell for more than $1 million.
This is the dream, right? It’s what most people wished for when the baseball-card boom hit in the late ’80s. People from that era are instead left with overproduced cards that are mostly worthless. But this find, this is the ultimate discovery.
The man who found the cards hasn’t been identified publicly, but we know his story thanks to a Forbes article: He found the cards in his aunt’s attic after his uncle passed away. His uncle owned a sweets company that had produced cards in the 1960s for TV shows. At some point, the family believes, he bought the sports cards for research and development.
There were boxes of 1959 Fleer Ted Williams, Topps and Fleer football cards from the early 1960s and 1961 Fleer basketball cards, but nothing compared to the crown jewel of the find — a box of 1948 Bowman baseball cards with 19 of the 24 packs unopened. No one in the hobby has seen anything like it. The cards, which were stashed away in an old Stroh’s beer box, are now being called “The Beer Box Find.”
6. Unseen Photos of Mount St. Helens Eruption Uncovered From Forgotten Camera
A vintage camera from the early 20th century containing a roll of undeveloped film has yielded an extraordinary set of images showing the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, considered among the most disastrous volcanic eruptions in US history.
Whenever photographer Kati Dimoff finds herself in southeast Portland, she stops into the Goodwill on Grand Avenue and checks the film cameras for undeveloped rolls of film. On May 26th, she found an Argus C2 camera dating back to around 1938, containing a damaged roll of Kodachrome slide film. She took it to Blue Moon, a company that specializes in processing discontinued film.
“[W]hen I picked up the prints on Monday June 12th, there was a note on the package that said ‘is this from the Mt St Helens eruption?’,” noted Dimoff in an email to Gizmodo.
Indeed, some of the shots showed Mount St. Helens way off in the distance with small puffs of ash from what appears to be the beginning of the eruption, with the Longview Bridge in view, “so it must have been shot from just off highway 30,” said Dimoff.
7. Found: A 3,000-Year-Old Prosthetic Toe
SOMETIME ABOUT 3,000 YEARS AGO, a priest’s daughter in Egypt lost her big toe. After she died, she was buried in a shaft tomb not far from Luxor, in a cemetery reserved for elite members of the community.
For the past year and a half, scientists from the University of Basel, in Switzerland, have been studying this place, and as part of their research, they found the burial place of the priest’s daughter, along with the prosthetic toe that was crafted to replace her missing digit.
This prosthetic device is likely one of the oldest known today. Made of wood, the toe came with panels that could be laced together to keep the device snug to her foot. After studying the device closely, the University of Basel found that it had been refitted more than once to the woman’s foot.
“The fact that the prosthesis was made in such a laborious and meticulous manner indicates that the owner valued a natural look, aesthetics and wearing comfort and that she was able to count on highly qualified specialists to provide this,” according to a University of Basel press release.
8. Rare Complete Set of Goya Etchings Discovered in French Castle
A rare, complete set of Francisco de Goya’s bullfighting etchings, titled La Tauromaquia, has been discovered by chance at the Château de Montigny, in Eure-et-Loir, Northern France.
On April 4, Sotheby’s London will auction the album of 33 etchings, which has an estimate of between £300,000-500,000 ($366,000-610,000) as part of its Prints & Multiples sale.
The estimate might be cautious, however, since, according to the artnet Price Database, a complete set of Goya’s La Tauromaquia sold at Christie’s New York in April 2013 for $1.9 million, smashing the record for prints by the artist.
“With La Tauromaquia currently holding the auction record for a series of prints by Goya, we’re expecting an enthusiastic response from collectors,” Séverine Nackers, head of prints at Sotheby’s Europe, said in a statement.
The volume was discovered as the new heirs to the castle were inspecting the property. Tucked away at the back of a library shelf, they found a 19th-century ledger containing 90 lithographs bearing the signature H. Bellangé, followed by another series of prints, which were rapidly identified as etchings by Goya.
The monochrome etchings—found in perfect condition—were created by the Spanish master in 1815-1816, by using dark umber ink on textured, handmade paper.
According to Sotheby’s, they are particularly valuable because they are examples of the first and only contemporary edition that was printed for Goya.
9. Painting found in an attic may be a $10 million Jackson Pollock
A $10 million dollar Jackson Pollock painting has been discovered and the Arizona owner had no idea they were holding something so valuable in their attic.
J. Levine auctions had been asked to go through an estate of a Sun City resident looking at LA Lakers memorabilia that was signed by Kobe Bryant.
What they stumbled upon was a treasure trove of paintings including what they are calling a rare Pollock painting.
While Josh Levine thought the painting was the real deal, he had to prove it. Proof came in how the painting was acquired. It turns out that all of the artwork in the estate, including pieces by Kenneth Noland and Cora Kelley Ward, could be circled back to renowned mid-century New York art critic Clement Greenberg.
While the provenance definitely points to Pollock, the forensics also suggest it is a Pollock. The painting is definitely mid-century, with experts saying, "no pigments or binding media introduced in the late 1950s and 1960s have been detected."
Levine spent 18 months and invested 50,000 in private investigators and forensics authenticating the piece and will now sell the painting as a legitimate Jackson Pollock.
The painting will be sold on June 20th and is expected to go in the $10million dollar range.
10. 60 Vintage Cars Worth £12 Million Found After 50 Years Of Neglect On French Farm
It might seem like all the world’s buried treasures have already been found, but turns out there is still reason to go digging, perhaps even in your own family’s backyard. Recently, the late Roger Baillon’s grandchildren discovered an unknown collection of 60 vintage automobiles from the 1930’s to the 1950’s.
The cars were left to rust under a collection of coverings and sheds located on the family farm in western France. The fleet isn’t made up of just any old vehicles, but instead this car collection includes some of the most collectable cars in the world, and is worth an estimated 14.9 million US dollars.
The Talbot-Lago, pictured above, was found amongst the dusty treasures and once owned by Egyptian King Farouk, the tenth ruler of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty. Another dusty masterpiece found here includes a Ferrari owned by Alain Delon. And that’s far from all, there are also Maseratis, Bugattis, Delahayes, Delages, Hispano-Suizas and Panhard-Levassors.
The most expensive car in the collection is a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder, which is expected to be one of the biggest earners, worth anywhere between 9.5 to 14.9 million dollars. This car is a rare find, with only 37 models ever made and sold, all of which are carefully documented and this one was thought to be lost.
1. Hidden Nazi Memorabilia Stash Found in Argentina
 |
| Getty Images |
2. 124-Year-Old Never-Worn Levi's Found in Arizona Cedar Chest
 |
| Getty Images |
If so, they’re worth a small fortune, says Brit Eaton, a dealer in old jeans who actually searches abandoned mines for inventory.
“Vintage denim can be worth thousands of dollars,” Eaton says. “Finding Levi’s pre-1900 is a massive rarity. That’s the Holy Grail.”
Jock Taylor’s dungarees are featured in the latest episode of Strange Inheritance with Jamie Colby. It premieres Monday, April 3 at 9:30 p.m. ET on Fox Business Network.
The six-foot-six Warner left his upstate New York home and headed west in the 1830’s.
“He was the first to sell American goods in Tucson. The Butterfield Stage came through and whatever you wanted, you had to buy from Solomon Warner,” says Jim Turner, a writer on Arizona history.
Warner died in 1899. Through the generations, his descendants handed down a wooden “heirloom” trunk that bears his name.
“When Solomon’s son passed away it went to his only daughter, then everything that she had went to my mother” says Jock Taylor.
Taylor didn’t know whether the jeans were Warner’s, or added to the chest later. He decided to find out when an antique appraisal show came to town.
Auctioneer Daniel Buck Soules recalls Taylor approaching him.
“Why is he showing me new jeans?” Soules thought. Then he took a closer look.
The jeans had the familiar leather tag, adorning Levi’s from 1886 until today. But the rivets were exposed, meaning they were older than 1937, when Levi’s started covering them with denim.
More clues: suspender buttons indicated they were older than 1922, the first year for belt loops. The single back pocket proved they were older than 1901 – when the second appeared.
Soules dated them to 1893. He thought private buyers would pay dearly for the vintage jeans—or even Levi Strauss & Co. itself, which has bought back old jeans at high prices.
“The last pair of blue jeans that sold from the 1880s, it’s my understanding, were purchased by Levi’s for six figures,” says Soules.
Taylor’s jeans are not as old, but in much better shape – perhaps the oldest unworn pair of Levi’s in existence.
Even still, denim dealer Eaton thinks the 44” x 37” britches are too big for a $100,000 payday. Most of the bidders who drive such stratospheric prices, he says, actually want to wear their vintage jeans.
Are You Know?
10 Unusual Home Mosaic Designs
8 Offensive Articles of Clothing
10 Unbelievable Snowman Stories
3. One man's trash is another's treasure: The still-working $80,000 Steinway piano found abandoned in a tip
 |
Musician Wil Thomas was 'shocked and stupefied' when he came across the still working baby grand piano being played by Tui Warihana, 16, while dumping his garden waste at the Broome site.
'The young guy who was beating the ivories said he didn't have the room for it, so it was down to us,' Mr Thomas posted online.
'It had sustained some damage when it was dumped, but other than that its still in tune and totally playable!'
The piano had been mistakenly thrown out during a clean out at the Cable Beach Club, the ABC reports.
Previous owners also include Lord Alistair McAlpine, advisor to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Upon discovering the hidden treasure, Mr Thomas made a hasty phone call to Don Bacon, a Steinway owner and businessman, to help him rescue the valuable instrument.
4. Talk About Hidden Treasure: $11.6K Babe Ruth Baseball Glove Found In Old Chest In Norway
 |
| Getty Images |
The 75-year-old owner of an apartment building in Trondheim, Norway was cleaning out his storage unit in the cellar. He happened upon a dusty old chest which had remained closed for possibly as long as a century.
Inside was an assortment of pristine, high-end sporting goods, including extremely valuable and rare baseball gloves, baseballs, and an inflatable chest protector— all circa 1920. So far, the six lots have generated $21,325 on eBay, with buyers stretching from Ohio to Texas. The auction for the final piece, a spectacular baseball glove, ends on March 31st. “[The Norway collection] is by far the greatest pre-1940s baseball glove find, bar none.” says Joe Phillips, a hobby veteran who authenticates professional baseball gloves for Heritage Auctions.
Roy Anderson bought the first glove listed on eBay for $2,827, a sensible price given that it's the only one in the world and comes with a box and ball worth $1,000. “I do love fairies and their tales,” said the Texas attorney and professor at SMU’s Dedman School of Law. “I am particularly enamored with the rarely heard tale of a chest in an obscure attic or other building. The owner’s death ensues. The chest is rubbed and treasures pour forth. In this case, no relative ever peeked for generations. My wife Barbara does a lot of estate work. She never, ever has come across a set of relatives that did not go through every piece of paper and underwear the deceased left behind. That’s usually when the magic chest surfaces. Not generations later.”
5. Baseball cards found unopened in attic may sell for $1 million at auction
 |
| Getty Images |
This is the dream, right? It’s what most people wished for when the baseball-card boom hit in the late ’80s. People from that era are instead left with overproduced cards that are mostly worthless. But this find, this is the ultimate discovery.
The man who found the cards hasn’t been identified publicly, but we know his story thanks to a Forbes article: He found the cards in his aunt’s attic after his uncle passed away. His uncle owned a sweets company that had produced cards in the 1960s for TV shows. At some point, the family believes, he bought the sports cards for research and development.
There were boxes of 1959 Fleer Ted Williams, Topps and Fleer football cards from the early 1960s and 1961 Fleer basketball cards, but nothing compared to the crown jewel of the find — a box of 1948 Bowman baseball cards with 19 of the 24 packs unopened. No one in the hobby has seen anything like it. The cards, which were stashed away in an old Stroh’s beer box, are now being called “The Beer Box Find.”
6. Unseen Photos of Mount St. Helens Eruption Uncovered From Forgotten Camera
 |
| Getty Images |
Whenever photographer Kati Dimoff finds herself in southeast Portland, she stops into the Goodwill on Grand Avenue and checks the film cameras for undeveloped rolls of film. On May 26th, she found an Argus C2 camera dating back to around 1938, containing a damaged roll of Kodachrome slide film. She took it to Blue Moon, a company that specializes in processing discontinued film.
“[W]hen I picked up the prints on Monday June 12th, there was a note on the package that said ‘is this from the Mt St Helens eruption?’,” noted Dimoff in an email to Gizmodo.
Indeed, some of the shots showed Mount St. Helens way off in the distance with small puffs of ash from what appears to be the beginning of the eruption, with the Longview Bridge in view, “so it must have been shot from just off highway 30,” said Dimoff.
7. Found: A 3,000-Year-Old Prosthetic Toe
 |
| Getty Images |
For the past year and a half, scientists from the University of Basel, in Switzerland, have been studying this place, and as part of their research, they found the burial place of the priest’s daughter, along with the prosthetic toe that was crafted to replace her missing digit.
This prosthetic device is likely one of the oldest known today. Made of wood, the toe came with panels that could be laced together to keep the device snug to her foot. After studying the device closely, the University of Basel found that it had been refitted more than once to the woman’s foot.
“The fact that the prosthesis was made in such a laborious and meticulous manner indicates that the owner valued a natural look, aesthetics and wearing comfort and that she was able to count on highly qualified specialists to provide this,” according to a University of Basel press release.
8. Rare Complete Set of Goya Etchings Discovered in French Castle
 |
| Getty Images |
On April 4, Sotheby’s London will auction the album of 33 etchings, which has an estimate of between £300,000-500,000 ($366,000-610,000) as part of its Prints & Multiples sale.
The estimate might be cautious, however, since, according to the artnet Price Database, a complete set of Goya’s La Tauromaquia sold at Christie’s New York in April 2013 for $1.9 million, smashing the record for prints by the artist.
“With La Tauromaquia currently holding the auction record for a series of prints by Goya, we’re expecting an enthusiastic response from collectors,” Séverine Nackers, head of prints at Sotheby’s Europe, said in a statement.
The volume was discovered as the new heirs to the castle were inspecting the property. Tucked away at the back of a library shelf, they found a 19th-century ledger containing 90 lithographs bearing the signature H. Bellangé, followed by another series of prints, which were rapidly identified as etchings by Goya.
The monochrome etchings—found in perfect condition—were created by the Spanish master in 1815-1816, by using dark umber ink on textured, handmade paper.
According to Sotheby’s, they are particularly valuable because they are examples of the first and only contemporary edition that was printed for Goya.
9. Painting found in an attic may be a $10 million Jackson Pollock
 |
| Getty Images |
J. Levine auctions had been asked to go through an estate of a Sun City resident looking at LA Lakers memorabilia that was signed by Kobe Bryant.
What they stumbled upon was a treasure trove of paintings including what they are calling a rare Pollock painting.
While Josh Levine thought the painting was the real deal, he had to prove it. Proof came in how the painting was acquired. It turns out that all of the artwork in the estate, including pieces by Kenneth Noland and Cora Kelley Ward, could be circled back to renowned mid-century New York art critic Clement Greenberg.
While the provenance definitely points to Pollock, the forensics also suggest it is a Pollock. The painting is definitely mid-century, with experts saying, "no pigments or binding media introduced in the late 1950s and 1960s have been detected."
Levine spent 18 months and invested 50,000 in private investigators and forensics authenticating the piece and will now sell the painting as a legitimate Jackson Pollock.
The painting will be sold on June 20th and is expected to go in the $10million dollar range.
10. 60 Vintage Cars Worth £12 Million Found After 50 Years Of Neglect On French Farm
 |
| Getty Images |
The cars were left to rust under a collection of coverings and sheds located on the family farm in western France. The fleet isn’t made up of just any old vehicles, but instead this car collection includes some of the most collectable cars in the world, and is worth an estimated 14.9 million US dollars.
The Talbot-Lago, pictured above, was found amongst the dusty treasures and once owned by Egyptian King Farouk, the tenth ruler of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty. Another dusty masterpiece found here includes a Ferrari owned by Alain Delon. And that’s far from all, there are also Maseratis, Bugattis, Delahayes, Delages, Hispano-Suizas and Panhard-Levassors.
The most expensive car in the collection is a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder, which is expected to be one of the biggest earners, worth anywhere between 9.5 to 14.9 million dollars. This car is a rare find, with only 37 models ever made and sold, all of which are carefully documented and this one was thought to be lost.
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