Its worth how much?!? Part II
Below we look at a further 5 items that were once thought to be worthless but have now turned out to be priceless. Perhaps its true, one man's trash is another man's treasure.
Its worth how much?!? Part II
1. $28.6 million Buried Sculpture
When construction workers first unearthed this 2,000-year-old bronze sculpture in Rome in the 1920s, they never could have guessed it would fetch the highest price for any relic — indeed, for any sculpture, period — ever sold at auction. "I'd say it's probably the best antiquity I've sold in my 37 years at Sotheby's," a director at the famous auction house said of the 36-inch statue of the Goddess of the Hunt. And to think, some curators predicted it would only sell for $7 million.
1. $ 1.25 million Board Game Painting
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One day, an employee at a tool-and-die company in Indiana spent $30 for a few pieces of used furniture and an old painting of some flowers. When he got his new stuff home, he decided to strategically hang the picture to cover up a hole in the wall that had been bugging him.
Some years later he was playing a board game called Masterpiece in which players attempt to outbid one another for artwork at an auction. Much to his surprise, one of the cards in the game featured a painting of flowers that looked a lot like the one he had on his wall. So he went online and found that his painting was similar in style to the work of Martin Johnson Heade, an American still-life artist best known for landscapes and flower arrangements. Through his research he found the Kennedy Galleries in Manhattan, which handles many of Heade's works, and asked them to take a look at his painting. They agreed and were able to verify that the piece of artwork covering the hole in his wall was a previously unknown Heade painting, since named Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth. In 1999, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston purchased the painting for $1.25 million dollars.
2. Priceless Holy relic found in closet
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In 2011 a Tenesse man, nick named frosty, found out the picture of Jesus he had been storing in his closest was actually a priceless relic. Even more interestingly its rarity was only discovered after it had been stolen. The thief was turned in by the would be buyers who realised the significance of the work.
The work is a painting of the "Veil of Veronica' the linen art work is 150 years old and was blessed by Pope Peo XIII. According to legend a follower of Jesus dabbed his face with the cloth which imprinted his likeness on to it. There have only been a handful of painting created from this cloth, and some believe it may be the most accurate depiction of the Jesus's face.
According to Frosty he was given the piece some 20 years ago as a present.
3. $300,000 Flea Market Necklace
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In 2005 a Philedeliphia women named Norma Ifill bought a necklace at a flea market not realizeing only six years earlier it had hung in the Metropolitain Musuam of Modern Art. The Necklace ended up being by Alex Calder and could be worth up to $300,000. "I thought it looked so tribal," Ifill told Bloomberg. "I wore it about four-five times max and every time I wore it, people always admired it. I can’t believe I had a Calder necklace all this time and had no idea."
4. $10,400 Cassette RecordingValueMyStuff-cassette.png
A six-minute telephone interview with the Beatles recorded in 1964 and bought at a Los Angeles flea market for $5 in November 2001 sold for $10,400 dollars at an online auction.
5. A Missing Mark Twain manuscript
For years now, the second half of Mark Twain’s manuscript for Huck Finn has been treasured and cared for in the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. But what about the first half? As it turns out, it’s been hidden away inside of a trunk in the attic of the very book collector that convinced Mark Twain to donate the book to the library in the first place. After Twain handed the manuscript over to James Fraser Gluck, the collector managed to lose the first half before giving it to the library.
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Finally, over 100 years later, Gluck’s granddaughters discovered the manuscript and intended to put it on auction at Sotheby’s in New York. Before the auction date, an ownership claim arose after the library pointed out that Twain had promised the manuscript would go into their collection. Rather than making a legal battle out of the matter, the sisters decided to sell the manuscript to the library for an undisclosed, but reportedly low, six-digit sum. While it was far less than the piece would have earned at auction, the sisters claimed they agreed to sell it to the library as an act of charity.