Sign In
  • Best Buys
  • Household Money
  • Banking & Borrowing
  • Mortgages & Home
  • Saving & Making Money
  • Rights, Scams & Politics
  • Motoring & Travel
  • Investing & Pensions
  • Savings & ISAs
  • Features
  • Compare

Family heirlooms that proved to be worth a fortune

Inherited items that turned out to be very valuable
Medieval gold in a secret drawer: $1,045 (£850)
Obscene lesbian literature: up to $1,500 (£1.2k)
Kammer & Reinhardt doll: up to $2,500 (£2k)
Burmese ruby ring: up to $12,000 (£9.7k)
French baby doll: up to $14,000 (£11.3k)
Picasso's face in an oval: up to $15,000 (£12k)
Cubist coffee set drawing: up to $30,000 (£24k)
Charles H. Wilda's Hour of Prayer: $50,000 (£40.5k)
Édouard Cortès oil painting: up to $50,000 (£40.5k)
King of Spain pocket watch: $50,000 (£40.5k)
16th-century marriage jewel: $60,000 (£48.6k)
Letter from Galileo: up to $100,000 (£81k)
Gem-studded Tiffany necklace: $100,000 (£81k)
Widower's medals of honour: $137,000 (£110k)
Hot Wheels Beach Bomb prototype: $150,000 (£122k)
Art Deco diamond bracelet: $186,000 (£150k)
Doll's house from 1705: $186,000 (£150k)
Charles Rohlfs chair: $225,000 (£182k)
Crateful of Tiffany vases: $238,000 (£193k)
Rare Chinese vase found in a house clearance: $247,000 (£200k)
Tang Dynasty marble lion: up to $259,000 (£210k)
Mosquito in an H.F Farny painting: up to $300,000 (£241k)
William Orpen portrait: $309,000 (£250,000)
John Lavery sunny scene: $311,000 (£250k)
Tiffany rose helmet lamp: up to $350,000 (£284k)
Rodin bronze sculpture: $370,000 (£300k)
Alma-Tadema portrait: up to $373,000 (£300k)
Crawley Silver Collection: $435,000 (£350k)
Kleitsch oil landscape: $500,000 (£402k)
Vintage Corvette Stingray: $675,000 (£543k)
The Old Master painting in the spare room: $664,000 (£540k)
Robert Henri family portrait: up to $700,000 (£569k)
Frederic Remington portrait: up to $800,000 (£648k)
18th century jade collection: up to $1 million (£805k)
Million dollar baseball cards: $1 million (£810k)
Alexander Calder mobile: up to $1 million (£810k)
Baseball card archive: $1 million (£810k)
The million dollar blanket: $1.5 million (£1.2m)
The worthless cracked vase: $62,200 (£56k)
River on the back of the door: up to $2.2 million (£1.8m)
Patek Philippe pocketwatch: up to $3 million (£2.4m)
Comics in the basement: $3.5 million (£2.7m)
Bugatti in the garage: $3.8 million (£2.9m)
Gold hidden in Normandy: $4 million (£3.1m)
The painting hidden in the walls: $19 million (£14.7m)
Van Gogh in the attic: up to $90.6 million (£70m)
The old vase in the kitchen: $1.77 million (£1.5m)
The well-thumbed children's classics: $29,500 (£25k)
1 of 49
Olaf Kraak/Getty Images

Inherited items that turned out to be very valuable

From medals of honour to a painting of a grandmother that turned out to be worth hundreds of thousands – you never know how much an inherited keepsake could be worth. Click or scroll through to take a look at some of the most valuable heirlooms that people have been left.

Gallery view |
List View

Hannah Ward-Glenton

06 April 2020

Features

See more on this topic

Share the love