We all love snapping up a bargain – but for these lucky people, a thrifty purchase brought much more than self-satisfaction. From ancient artefacts to the US Declaration of Independence, read on to discover some of the most jaw-dropping treasures that were bought for peanuts but proved to be VERY valuable...

All dollar amounts in US dollars and currency conversions correct for the time of sale.

This marble bust of the 18th-century MP Sir John Gordon, who was also the Secretary for Scotland, was sculpted by the French artist Edmé Bouchardon in 1728. You might expect to find such an historical item in a museum. But after ending up in a house sale in 1930, the bust was bought by the local council of the small Scottish town of Invergordon for the paltry sum of £5 – the equivalent of around £270 ($337) today.

Council members bought the bust with the intention of displaying it in the town hall. However, it was quickly relegated to the shed, where it was used as an impromptu doorstop, forgotten for decades until it was rediscovered in the 1990s.

Today the bust is valued at over £2.5 million ($3.1m). It's enjoyed stints in museums in Paris and Los Angeles, and now, Highland Council committee members are debating selling the sculpture. An offer exceeding £2.5 million has reportedly been made, with the aspiring buyer even offering to pay for a replica of the bust that would go on show in Invergordon.

It's not just marble busts that make handy doorstops. Mary (pictured), whose mother Amanda asked her to find an ornament for their bathroom, paid just £8.50 ($11) for this vase in a charity shop in Leigh-on-Sea, England. For the next few years, the item "sat in the corner of the downstairs loo" and was even used as "an occasional doorstop." When Amanda moved house, she considered getting rid of the vase – but an episode of British TV show Antiques Roadshow, in which an "identical" piece was revealed to date from the Chinese Ming dynasty and was valued at up to £10,000 ($13k), made her change her mind. 

The Lawlers took the vase to be valued at Lockdales Auction House. Auctioneers believed the vase was one of a pair that had been split up and purchased from different charity shops, both for under £10 ($13), and gave it an estimate of £3,000 to £4,000 ($3.9k-$5.2k).

When the item went under the hammer on 13 July, it sold for £3,400 ($4.5k) – a staggering 400 times the price Mary Lawler originally paid. The family revealed the money would be used to renovate Mary's old car, with Amanda describing the sale as "one of those 'I'm just going to sit down for a little bit' moments".

In 2018, art collector Laura Young bought this sculpture for $34.99 (£28.30) from a Goodwill store in Austin, Texas. Young suspected the statue was very old and spent the next few years getting it appraised by experts at auction houses and universities. But it turned out to be even older than she'd thought. According to a German museum, the bust dates from around the first century BC, making it an authentic Roman artwork.

Although the identity of the model has been disputed, the piece was discovered to have belonged to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who built a full-sized replica of a Pompeiian house in the 1800s. The house was bombed during World War II and this bust somehow made its way to Austin. The Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens, and Lakes has agreed to lend the statue to the San Antonio Museum of Art before it will finally return to Germany. 

In December 2021, a guest on Antiques Roadshow in the UK got a surprise when she discovered the gold ring she'd bought in a local charity shop was more than 200 years old. Believing the ring contained a piece of glass, she'd paid just £1 ($1.33) for it. But, according to jewellery specialist John Benjamin, the piece featured a real diamond and rubies and originally hailed from India. He valued the item as being worth at least £2,000 ($2.65k), an impressive return on the stunned owner's investment. 

In 2013, Columbus, Ohio resident Zach Bodish bagged a Picasso poster from his local Volunteers of America thrift store for $14 (£9.30). Assuming it was just a mass-market print, Bodish was bowled over to discover the great painter's signature on the poster. He had the poster appraised and it turned out to be an original printed by Picasso himself. The poster went on to sell for an incredible $7,000 (£4.6k).

Hoping to make a small profit, Kentucky resident Greg Estes bought a bicycle with flat tyres and apparently broken pedals for only $5 (£3.35) at a garage sale in 2010. Further research revealed the pedals were not at all broken but a custom-made pair for professional cyclists. As it turned out, the bike originally belonged to US road racing cyclist Floyd Landis (pictured) but was blown off a transporter and found on the side of the road two years earlier. Estes sold it for $8,000 (£6k).

A seasoned collector stumbled upon a 16th-century engraving by Albrecht Dürer at a flea market in Sarrebourg, France and bought it for just a few euros. The Maria, crowned by an angel engraving, which is reportedly worth thousands of dollars, went missing from the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany during World War II. Rather than hold on to the artwork, the benevolent collector returned it to its rightful home.

In 1970, a woman bought a plate in Rhode Island for less than $100 (£40), and it sat above her stove for years. In 2014 she took it along to be appraised on US TV show Antiques Roadshow and was shocked to discover it was a Picasso-designed Madoura plate from 1955 worth in the region of $10,000 (£5.9k). 

In 2016 this rare 16th-century statue of the Tibetan Green Tara goddess was snapped up at a car boot sale in West Sussex, England for just £25 ($30). The anonymous buyer suspected it was worth a lot more, but was stunned when a valuer told her it was worth in the region of £5,000 ($6.3k). The statue went on to sell for an even more impressive £15,500 ($19.5k) when it went up for auction.

Hoping to make a small profit, a woman bought three wine glasses at a car boot sale in Portsmouth, England for 40p (53c) each and took them to a salesroom to ask about their value. The bargain hunter was stunned when she learned that they were rare 18th-century Beilby glasses (similar to the one pictured), which then sold at auction in 2011 for a combined £18,800 ($30k) to a glass dealer.

In 2002, music fan Warren Hill found an odd-looking acetate disc at a Manhattan flea market with 'The Velvet Underground' written on the label, and bought it for 75 cents (50p). The disc turned out to be a super-rare demo by The Velvet Underground. The demo was sold on eBay in 2006 for $25,000 (£14k).

In 2016 an amateur collector came across this beautiful metallic Chinese bowl in a charity shop in Somerset, England. The antique enthusiast paid just £2 ($2.50) for the 18th-century bowl, which was later valued at £5,000 ($6.3k). It went on to sell at auction for a very respectable £21,000 ($26.4k). That's more than 10,000 times what the collector originally paid for it.

An impoverished German student lucked out big time in 2007 when she found a 17th-century oil painting in a second-hand couch she'd snapped up for just $215 (£110) at a Berlin flea market. The painting, Preparation to Escape to Egypt by a pupil of Italian artist Carlo Saraceni, was eventually sold for a whopping $28,870 (£23k) at an art auction in Hamburg.

A German tourist was strolling through a Parisian flea market in 2012 when a brochure with the word 'Brücke' on it caught his eye. He paid $5.50 (£4.20) for what turned out to be quite a find. The brochure was a rare catalogue for a 1912 travelling exhibition of the works of Die Brücke, an influential group of German expressionist artists. The work, containing 10 original woodcuts, went under the hammer the same year for $29,700 (£22.8k).

Hunting for cheap canvases one day in 2012, Beth Feeback, a hard-up artist from North Carolina, made a beeline for her local thrift store and snagged a couple of oil paintings for $9.99 (£6.20), which she intended to paint over. Thankfully, before Feeback attempted to paint over one of the pictures, a knowledgeable friend recognised it as the work of abstract artist Ilya Bolotowsky. Feeback put the painting up for auction at Sotheby's not long after, where it fetched more than $34,000 (£27.1k).

A sensational Goodwill store find, bargain hunter Zach Norris was browsing in his local outlet in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2015 when he discovered a watch with 'LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm Automatic' engraved on the face. Suspecting it could be worth a whole lot more than its $5.99 (£3.80) price tag, he bought the watch and had it valued. Turns out the vintage timepiece from 1959 was worth a fortune. Needless to say, Norris sold it a month later for a tidy $35,000 (£27.9k).

In the early 2000s, a couple bought this glass vase for £1 (just over $1) from a car boot sale in Dumfries, Scotland because they liked the look of the plant it was carrying. When the plant died, the vase was stashed away in the loft and almost forgotten about until TV show Antiques Roadshow came to town in 2008. Half-jokingly, the couple brought along the vase, and were flabbergasted to discover it was a highly desirable piece by Art Nouveau icon René Lalique. They sold it later that year for £32,500 ($40.8k).

When Thea Jourdan from Hampshire, England bought a pink stone brooch, surrounded by what she believed were faux diamonds, for only £20 ($27), she thought it was just "flashy old tat" for her four-year-old daughter's toybox. Her little girl loved it and wore it a lot. When Jourdan was having a ring valued, the appraiser spotted the brooch, which turned out to be made of topaz and real diamonds and was thought to have once been worn by a Russian tsarina. It sold in 2011 for £32,000 ($42.6k).

During a shopping trip in 2014, Sean and Rikki McEvoy of Asheville, North Carolina paid $58 (£46) for a vintage sweatshirt from their local Goodwill store. Not long after, the couple were watching a documentary on legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi and spotted him wearing the sweatshirt they'd bought. It sold at auction a year later for $44,150 (£35.2k).

In 2013, an Australian antiques collector on the hunt for bargains spotted an interesting-looking cup in a thrift store in Sydney, priced at just $4 (£3.20). Suspecting it may be worth a lot more, the collector enlisted the services of a Sotheby's valuer, who revealed the object was a 17th-century Chinese rhinoceros horn 'libation' cup. The cup went on to fetch $75,500 (£59.8k) at auction.

This colourful painting of an Indian town scene caught the eye of a taxi driver at a car boot sale in north London. The bargain hunter successfully haggled down the £60 ($78) asking price to £40 ($52) before taking the artwork home with him, where it hung on the wall for some 30 years.

In 2016, the man decided to redecorate and took the two-foot-wide canvas to Roseberys auction house. Exceeding all expectations, the painting, believed to be the work of Sikh artist Baba Bishan Singh, sold for a staggering £92,200 ($123k).

This 1936 painting by Australian artist John Wardell Power entitled A Basket of Fruit was last seen in Paris in 1945, until it turned up at a Dutch flea market in 2015. While the flea market price was never disclosed, the artwork was sold later that year at Bonhams auction house in Sydney for $125,600 (£94.2k).

This green vintage jacket was snapped up by a sports journalist in a Toronto thrift store for only $5 (£3.35) in 1994. The rare find turned out to be an official Augusta National Golf Club green jacket, most likely from the 1950s. At an online auction in 2017, the collector's item fetched an eye-watering $139,349 (£104k).

A very fortunate bargain hunter, who has chosen to remain anonymous, picked up an old Breitling watch at a car boot sale in 2013 for just £25 ($31). The mock Geiger counter was a dead giveaway: the watch was revealed to be the timepiece worn by the late Sean Connery in the James Bond movie Thunderball. The customised Breitling Top Time watch sold later that year for £131k ($164).

Goodwill retail stores in the US appear to be veritable troves of hidden treasure. In 2010, an 81-year-old South Carolina resident, who has chosen to remain anonymous, purchased a painting from his local Goodwill for just $3 (£2.40). On a whim, the man's daughter-in-law got it appraised by an expert from Antiques Roadshow – and the picture was revealed to be a 17th-century Flemish masterpiece. It went on to fetch $190,000 (£151k) at auction in 2012.

This dress, worn by Princess Diana to a state dinner in Bahrain in 1986, was found in a charity shop in Herefordshire, England in 1994 by a local woman. She bought it for just £200 ($300), paying in four £50 ($75) instalments. That's the equivalent of over £400 ($500) today.

The silk dress, designed by David and Elizabeth Emanuel, was discovered and went to auction in December 2018, selling for £156,000 ($195k), surpassing its £60,000 to £100,000 ($75k-$125k) valuation. 

Eagled-eyed antique dealer Paul Fitzsimmons snapped up an antique wooden falcon for just £75 ($99) at an auction in 2019. The bird was later identified as belonging to Anne Boleyn, having been made in 1536, just three years before she was beheaded on the orders of her husband King Henry VIII. The king then had all traces of the ill-fated queen removed from the palaces, making the item a rarity.

In excellent condition, the falcon still bears its original gilding and colours, and its true value is estimated at £200,000 ($263k). Fitzsimmons generously loaned the bird to Hampton Court Palace in London.

In 2005, Philadelphia native Norma Ifill chanced upon this striking necklace at a flea market in New York and bought it for a mere $15 (£7.80). Three years later, she visited an Alexander Calder exhibition and realised her 'cheap' necklace was one of the renowned American sculptor's missing works – it fetched $267,750 (£213k) at a Christie's auction in 2013. That's more than 17,000 times what she paid for it.

In 2012, Robert Darvell, a graphic designer from London, was gifted a small landscape painting by his father Robin, who had purchased the picture as part of a £30 ($39) job lot some years before. Robert did some research and discovered it was a genuine John Constable painting worth £250,000 ($313k). The story was featured on the TV show Treasure Detectives the following year.

While scanning a newspaper in 1967, one lady came across an advert selling a Tiffany Studios lamp with a fashionable gold base in an Art Nouveau style. She got in contact with the seller and bought it for $125 (£45). Little did she know quite how much her new second-hand purchase was worth. The lamp made an appearance on Antiques Roadshow in 1999, and was given a valuation of $125,000 (£78k).  A second opinion more than 20 years later returned a valuation of $350,000 (£284k). 

Enjoying a similar windfall, in 2006 Nashville resident Michael Sparks came across an old, rolled-up document in a neighbourhood thrift store, which he bought for a paltry $2.48 (£1.41). When Sparks unrolled the document, he couldn't believe his eyes – he had found a copy of the US Declaration of Independence from 1823, which he sold in 2007 for $477,650 (£243k).

If you’re looking to invest in some artwork, it definitely helps if you have a world-renowned Impressionist painter within your friendship circle. One lady who featured on Antiques Roadshow described how her parents had been friends with Joseph Kleitsch, and that following his death they were able to pick up this oil landscape for $100. In 2015, art expert Dana Force estimated the painting had rocketed in value to $500,000 (£400k).

A collector took a gamble on a cracked teapot at an auction in 2016, buying it for just $19 (£15). He then took it to Woolley and Wallis auctioneers, and ceramics experts established it was a piece by John Bartlam, who emigrated to America from Britain and was the first person to make porcelain in the US. As a truly historical artefact, it went for auction with an estimated price of $25,280 (£20k) but sold for more than 20 times that when it was bought by the Metropolitan Museum in New York for $580,255 (£462k).

A man purchased this blue and white porcelain bowl at a yard sale in New Haven, Connecticut in 2020 for just $35 (£25). He didn't haggle over the price, thinking that this 6.25-inch bowl could be something rather special. The unnamed buyer then sent photos of the bowl to auction specialists, who immediately told him it was definitely of historical significance.

After closer inspection, the bowl was revealed to be from the court of China's Yongle Emperor, who ruled from 1403 to 1424, a period known for its porcelain techniques. Only six other known bowls have survived. Now called the lotus bowl, as it resembles a lotus flower bud, the rare item sold at auction for $722,000 (£517k) at Sotheby's in March 2021, surpassing its top estimate of $500,000 (£358k). That's more than 20,500 times the amount it was bought for at the yard sale.

With no idea what was inside, a couple from Long Island paid $100 (£57) at a blind auction for an unclaimed New York storage unit in 1989. However, their risk paid off as inside the container, covered under old blankets, was a real treasure – a Lotus Esprit sportscar used in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me as an underwater vehicle. In 2013 the couple put their lucky find up for auction with Sotheby's London, where it sold for a whopping £616,000 ($821k). The buyer, it was revealed later, was none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

This beautiful 26-carat diamond ring was purchased in the 1980s from a car boot sale for a bargain £10 ($12). The ring is thought to have been cut in the 19th century, but the rest of its history is unknown. After years of being overloooked, the ring finally proved its worth when it went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London. The impressive piece of jewellery sold for a whopping £656,000 ($828k), almost double the auction estimate.

An Edinburgh antique dealer bought this chess piece for just £5 ($6) back in 1964, not realising its significance. It’s one of five lost pieces belonging to a set found buried in a sand dune on the Scottish island of Lewis back in 1831 that experts believe was made in the late 12th century/early 13th century somewhere in Scandinavia. The other ‘Lewis chessmen’, as they're known, are on display at London’s British Museum and Edinburgh’s National Museum of Scotland.

Made from walrus ivory, the piece was passed down through the dealer’s family before being sold at Sotheby’s in London for £735,000 ($923k), a record for a medieval chess piece, in July 2019.

This still life was purchased for just $30 (£19) in the 1990s by a factory worker from Indiana, who used it to cover a hole in a wall in his home. Several years down the line, the hard-up machinist was playing the art-based card game Masterpiece and spotted a similar painting by the same artist on one of the cards.

The picture, which turned out to be a notable work by American landscape painter Martin Johnson Heade called Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth, went on to sell for $1.25 million (£777k) in 1999. Heade's work has repeatedly turned up in garage sales and other surprising places, which experts attribute to his popularity among middle-class buyers before he became acknowledged as a modern American master.

British tourist Andy Fields was on vacation in Las Vegas in 2010 when he hit a yard sale and bought five paintings for $5 (£4) from a man who claimed his aunt babysat the artist Andy Warhol when he was a child. Upon his return to the UK, Fields discovered a sketch hidden behind one of the paintings, which experts believe is an early sketch by Warhol of French-Canadian singer Rudy Vallée, worth $2 million (£1.6m).

In 2013, a New York family made the sort of discovery most bargain hunters can only dream about. Rummaging around a neighbourhood garage sale, they chanced upon a fairly ordinary-looking white bowl but decided to buy it nonetheless for the princely sum of $3 (£2.40). It later turned out to be a 1,000-year-old Chinese treasure and sold for $2.2 million (£1.75m) at auction.

Telecoms technician Randy Guijarro hit the jackpot in 2010 when he came across the Holy Grail of photography in a Fresno, California antiques shop – an ultra-rare photo of outlaw Billy the Kid playing croquet. Guijarro paid just $2 (£1.60) for the snap, which has since been valued at a cool $5 million (£4m) by appraisers from Kagin's.

In 2011, criminal defence lawyer Frank Abrahams purchased this photograph for $10 (£8) at a market in North Carolina, having no idea that it was an image of Billy the Kid alongside the man who would later shoot him dead, Pat Garrett. It wasn't until 2015 when he read about the Randy Guijarro photo being valued at $5 million that he realised he might have a valuable item on his hands.

Experts concluded that it was taken between 1879 and 1880, just a few years before Pat Garrett captured Billy and shot him dead, and is believed to be worth millions.

The second work by Albrecht Dürer in our round-up, this drawing was bought at a yard sale for $30 (£23) in 2017. The Virgin and Child (pictured) is a previously unknown artwork by the German artist and is believed to have been drawn around 1503.

Boston art collector Clifford Schorer was on his way to a party when he was asked to take a look at the drawing, which the friend of a friend had bought from an art dealer's son. Schorer was amazed to discover the drawing was "either the greatest forgery [he'd] ever seen or a masterpiece". It turned out to be the latter and has since been valued at $10 million (£7.5m). 

In 2007, New Yorkers Thomas Schultz and Lawrence Joseph paid $2,500 (£1.2k) for a huge collection of artworks by the late Armenian-American artist Arthur Pinajian, which they bought along with the artist's former home in Long Island. Now an art world sensation, works by Pinajian have skyrocketed in value, and the collection was valued at $30 million (£24m) in 2013.

In 2012, a scrap metal dealer in the Midwest decided to do some online research on a blingy egg-shaped ornament he'd picked up for $13,000 (£8k), which he intended to melt down. The dealer searched for 'Vacherin Constantin', the name engraved on the ornament, and 'egg', and realised he had bought the Third Imperial Fabergé egg. Valued at $33 million (£26.3m), the egg was purchased in 2014 by a private collector.

Updated by Alice Cattley

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