I made $ 8 at my mama ’s service department sale last weekend . That was n’t a literal error — I only made eight dollar , which put me in the hole about $ 79 when you factor in the speeding ticket I get on the path to her house .
serve it to say , I bid my luck ran more like that of the unwitting hoi polloi below who happened upon some amazing discoveries while shop through people ’s worn record and used tableware . see out some of their bargains :
1 . Ansel Adams negatives . Rick Norsigian was in the market for an age-old Samuel Barber hot seat at a Fresno garage sale when he spotted a couple of boxes of glass negative . His interest offend , Norsigian offer the owner $ 45 and terminate up lead home with them . After comment how similar the images seemed to some notable Ansel Adams photos of Yosemite National Park , he had them examined by experts . They were declare authentic , most likely rescued from a fire that destroyed a third of Adams ’ study in 1937 . People from Adams ’ bivouac are skeptical , to say the least , evencomparing Norsigian to Hitler . Whoa .
2 . Vintage Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield motion picture . Purchased for $ 2.00 at a New Jersey garage sale in 1980 by lensman Anton Fury , the pic are still in his possession while he figures out who they belong to and where they number from .
3 . Floyd Landis ’ bicycle . Most bike discover at service department cut-rate sale were maybe worth a couple of hundred sawbuck new . The one Greg Estes of Owenton , Ky. , found was deserving $ 8,000 and was impost build for Tour de France 2006 winner Floyd Landis ( well , he was the succeeder until he was stripped of his title for doping ) . It turned out the bike had been blown off the vehicle transporting it to an event in 2008 ; someone discover it by the side of the road and settle to throw it in a garage sales agreement , hoping to make a few bucks.4 . A sixteenth - century oil painting . The portrait was found at a garage sale in South Bend , Ind. Purchaser Frederick Wright did n’t really even handle for the piece and only bought it because the man depict reminded him of a eccentric from the British sitcomAre You Being Served?After interpret a Gallic inscription and discovering that the portrait may have been done in 1573 by French panther and fashion designer Francois Quesnel , Wright had the piece appraise . Its worth was estimated at $ 4,000 to $ 6,000 .
5 . Original artboards for the first event of the Avengers funny al-Qur’an . A creative small girl buy the blank drawings to colour in when her stepdad wondered if they might be worth something . They were : about $ 48,000 . It turned out the boards had been reported slip and the family was arrested ( and later on free ):
6 . The Declaration of Independence . Or at least a version of it . This tale is pretty celebrated , so you may have heard it before . If not , it goes a little something like this : Guy buy a cool , weathered - bet written matter of the Declaration of Independence at a yard sale , then hoard it in his garage for years . Guy gets in use , hombre and girl clean out their dust so they can move in together . Guy gives copy of the Declaration to a parsimony depot . A week subsequently , he determine out it was the real thing . Well , itwasa written matter , but it was one of 200 official copy commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820 . It sold for $ 477,000 in 2007.7 . A rare Velvet Underground acetate disc . In 2004 , record gatherer Warren Hill fork over a dollar sign for a plain ethanoate in a composition board arm that had the word “ Velvet Underground ” scribbled on it . An acetate saucer , in case you do n’t screw ( I did n’t ) , is a type of record that was used for register unlike mixing or getting preview copy of album to dj . Anyway , Warren beget a after part back from his one dollar bill , and his 75 - penny investing ended up netting him about $ 24,999.25 after it was find to be a demo of the first album the Velvet Underground ever made . The demonstration was turn away by Columbia Records .
8 . A rhomb - encrusted pendent forge like LeBron James ’ jersey . Vaneisha Robinson shell out $ 5 for a cute LeBron pendant at a garage sale several years ago , then by and by had it assess out of curiosity and found out it was 14 - carat atomic number 79 covered in two kt of real ball field . The chandelier originally belong to Maverick Carter , the question of LeBron ’s merchandising company . Robinson says she was blackjack into turning the pendant over to Carter ’s mother and file away a suit last yr .
