From priceless paintings hidden in the walls to gold coins secreted in a whiskey bottle – and even a Bugatti concealed in the garage – some people have found more than they bargained for when they moved into their new property. Read on to find out the most surprising and lucrative finds from these unexpected treasure hunters...

In 2016, when a Frenchman inherited a house in Evreux, Normandy from one of his relatives, he decided to move in. However, he soon found that he had inherited more than just a house...

Gradually, he realised that the house was filled with gold coins, ingots and bars. Hidden in furniture, and even a whiskey bottle, the total value of the 100kg of gold reached €3.5 million ($4.1m/£3.1m) at sale.

When Thomas Schultz and his business partner Laurence Joseph decided to buy a cottage in New York for $300,000 (£235k) in 2007, they were also the recipients of the work of the home's previous owner, an unknown Armenian artist Arthur Pinajian. The art work was meant to be dumped on a landfill site at the artist's request but Schultz couldn't throw away one man's life work, and he set about organising the collection of over 70,000 paintings. Little did he know what was going to happen next...

After organising the collection, interest in the abstract impressionist's paintings grew. The collection of Arthur Pinajian paintings was valued at an incredible $30 million (£23.6m), making Schultz a millionaire as well as a home owner.

When cartoonist Don Trachte's sons were renovating their late father's property in 2005 they were shocked to find paintings concealed in the walls. One of the hidden paintings – Breaking Home Ties – was by their father's friend and neighbour, artist Norman Rockwell.

His sons reasoned that their cartoonist father, who was responsible for creating the character 'Henry', had painted copies of the original paintings to prevent his wife obtaining them during their divorce. The sons sold the original of Norman Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties in 2006 for $15.4 million (£12m), a record for the artist's work at the time.

In Roanne, France, seven years after moving into their new property, a couple made an unexpected discovery in their garden. They found six gold bars in 2009, followed by another 22 in 2013, which had an estimated value of $942,168 (£706k).

However, despite legally declaring the finds, the couple underwent a criminal investigation when they sold 23 of the bars. That's not all. The publicity of the criminal investigation led the previous house owners to sue the couple over the ownership of the gold bullion. They won, which meant that the couple had to hand over the remaining bars, and reimburse them for the bars they had already sold.

Michael Rorrer was clearing out his late great aunt's home in Virginia when he stumbled upon a collection of 345 comics in the basement. The collection belonged to his late uncle, Billy Wright, who had never told anyone about his hobby before his death in 1994. The carefully arranged collection included rare comics such as Detective Comics No 27, the first comic to star Batman (pictured).

The impressive collection also contained the first comic that featured Superman (pictured) and stunned the comic book world. Unsurprisingly, the rare magazines fetched a whopping $3.5million (£2.7m) at auction in New York, in 2012.

In 2007 residents decided to dig a frog pond in the garden of their property in Hackney, east London. Three weeks into the project the dig revealed a glass jar filled with 80 gold coins. The find was identified as containing US Double-Eagle gold coins, and left residents wondering how they had found their way to east London...

The find was donated to the Museum of London, which deduced the coins belonged to German-Jewish refugee Martin Sulzbacher. Fearing a Nazi invasion, his brother buried the coins in his back garden in 1940 and told only his direct family members where they were located. Sulzbacher's brother and family members were killed not long after during a bombing raid and the location of the stash died with them. The museum has since found the owner's descendants and handed over the $132,000 (£108k) find.

Remarkably, a similar occurrence took place in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire. In March 2004, Ken Allen was digging a pond in his garden when he found a pile of coins sitting in a broken piece of pottery.

The hoard was in fact 11,460 Roman copper alloy coins, which experts have dated from between 260 and 348. Allen reported the find and the local coroner declared the hoard a treasure, valuing it at $51,000 (£40k).

When collector Dr Harold Carr passed away in 2009 he left his house in Newcastle, England to his relatives. But it was in the garage that his habit for collecting really paid off. Inside there was a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S, which had originally been owned by Earl Howe.

The eccentric doctor had bought the car for $1,143 (£895) in 1955, the equivalent of $29,125 (£22,806) today. But over 50 years later Dr Carr's relatives sold the car for a whopping $3.8 million (£3m). A strange turn of events for a family who didn't realise what Dr Carr was keeping in his garage. As his nephew said: "It was a bit of local folklore that he had a Bugatti, but no one knew for sure. It's worth so much because he hasn't used it for 50 years. It was one of the original super cars."

In 2010 architect Todd Ernst was renovating an 8,000 square foot apartment in the Tribeca neighbourhood of New York. To his surprise, during the renovations he discovered an original Keith Haring mural behind one of the walls. Haring's unmissable black doodle-like squiggles are now incorporated into the decor.

It's not a complete mystery though. The American Thread Co. building where the mural was found has an artistic past. The building regularly held exhibitions with the School of Visual Arts, where Keith Haring was a student. The apartment – along with its original art – sold in January 2015 for $10 million (£7.8m).

In 2014 a 400-year-old painting, believed to be by the Italian master Caravaggio, was discovered in the roof of a house in Toulouse while repairs were being carried out.

However, the identification of the painting as 'Judith Beheading Holofernes' by Caravaggio is contested. Pictured here in the Brera Art Gallery in Milan in 2016 there was outrage at it being exhibited as a Caravaggio when its author is not universally agreed. If it is a Caravaggio the painting has a value of $113 million (£88.5m).

In February 2013 a couple from Northern California discovered a pot of rare gold coins buried under a tree in their back garden. The haul was of 1,427 mint-condition gold coins, nearly all dating from 1847 to 1894.

The pot, which had been hidden away during the 19th-century Gold Rush, has an estimated value of $10 million (£7.8m). Although almost half of that value would go to the tax man. What's more, it's not a case of finders keepers as US Treasure Trove Laws mean that the collection could be claimed by descendants of the person who originally buried it. For this reason the couple remained anonymous and sold the coins via Amazon.