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Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com
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Welcome to Mental Floss Video, and did you know that a potentially valuable photo of Billy the Kid was once bought at a flea market for $10
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In 2011, Frank Abrams of North Carolina picked up the picture, which featured five men in
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Wild West gear because he thought it looked interesting and odd. And he hung it up in the spare bedroom he rented out on Airbnb
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Later while watching a documentary about the outlaw Billy the Kid, Abrams decided to take a second look at the men in his photograph
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They identified one of them as a known associate and later adversary of Billy the Kid, and
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believed another man in the photo was the kid himself. While not everyone agrees that the photo is of the kid, other pictures of the outlaw
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have been valued at millions of dollars. So Abrams decided to move his photo from the spare bedroom into a safety deposit box
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And that's just the first of many amazing yard sale, flea market and thrift store finds
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that I'm going to share with you today. Maybe you wouldn't recognize the photo of Billy the Kid, but hopefully you'd know Marilyn
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Monroe if you saw her. In 1980, Anton Fiori of New Jersey bought an envelope of photo negatives for $2 at a garage sale
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When he took a closer look, he realized he'd bought around 30 unpublished photos of Monroe
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as well as 70 of actress Jane Mansfield. Not much has been heard of them since, so it's unclear if Fiori cashed in on his find
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Two decades later, Rick Norsigen bought a couple of boxes of glass negatives at a garage
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sale in Fresno, California for $45. He stashed them under his pool table for a couple of
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years, and when he finally pulled them out, he noticed a similarity between the snaps of
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Yosemite and San Francisco and Ansel Adams' photographs. Norsigian gathered a team of experts who declared the negatives to be the work of the famous
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photographer, and worth $200 million. One expert later changed his mind and said the
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photos were actually taken by a lesser-known photographer named Earl Brooks. The debate
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over who actually took the photos rages on, but at least one thing has been settled legally
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Narcidion was allowed to sell the prints, but he had to give them a disclaimer, and he was not allowed to use the Addams name
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Similarly, a man once claimed he bought an original Andy Warhol sketch at a garage sale
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in Las Vegas for $5. The piece depicted singer Rudy Valli, and it was thought that Warhol drew it when he
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was around 10 years old. The Royal West England Academy in Bristol put it on display in 2012 A Warhol piece like that would be worth millions but art experts in Warhol family aren convinced that it authentic Warhol brother noted quote it had no characteristics of his drawing style whatsoever and the signature
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was vastly unlike his real signature. For a genuine Warhol-related discovery, let's
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talk about The Velvet Underground. Warhol managed the band in 1966 when they recorded
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a demo to send to labels. In the early 2000s, record collector Warren Hill came across one
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such demo at a Manhattan street sale and bought it for 75 cents. The record
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contains six tracks that eventually appeared on the album The Velvet Underground and Nico. Three went unreleased. Hill sold the demo for about
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$25,000. In 2008, a custom bicycle built for Tour de France winner Floyd Landis
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who was stripped of his title in 2007, was carried off a truck by Wind. The bike
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was worth about $8,000, unbeknownst to the person who found it, then sold it at
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his garage sale. They just thought it looked like a bike with flat tires and broken pedals, which were actually clip-in pedals. So Greg Estes was able to buy it for
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five dollars. He later discovered its worth and once even jokingly attempted to sell it
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for six thousand dollars at his own yard sale. But the owners actually wanted the bike back
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so he probably didn't get that much cash for it. At some point in the 1960s, Claire Weigand Beckman saw a moldy table at a garage sale
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that she thought would be perfect for her new house. Thirty years later, she brought
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it on Antiques Roadshow, where it was identified as being one of six made by Boston furniture
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maker John Seymour & Son, whose pieces you can also see at the Metropolitan Museum of
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Art. It would later sell at auction for $541,500. In 2007, a student bought a pull-out couch
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for $215 at a flea market in Berlin. Inside it, there was an Italian painting from the
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early 17th century titled, Preparation to Escape to Egypt. The artist couldn't be determined
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but that did not matter. The painting was later auctioned off for $27,630. Similarly
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A professor bought a 16th century oil painting at a garage sale in Indiana in the late 1980s
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It caught his eye because the subject looked like a character in a show he liked, the British
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sitcom Are You Being Served? He kept it in a storage locker until 2011 when an appraiser estimated that it might
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be worth up to $6,000. The appraiser believed it could be the work of Francois Cresnel, who worked for the Demedici
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family and has a portrait hanging in the Louvre A Catholic priest once purchased a gold frame at an antique shop for but it was the portrait inside the frame that ended up being the true find It was by Anthony Van a famous 17th century painter who worked under King Charles I According to experts
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this particular painting was likely a sketch leading up to him creating his more famous
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work, The Magistrates of Brussels, which was sadly destroyed by the French at the end of
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the 17th century. A family in Texas once unknowingly bought artboards from the first Avengers comic book
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because their 12-year-old daughter spotted them as something she'd like to color. There
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were worth about $48,000, but they'd been reported missing, so the family returned them
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In 2013, a bull bought at a garage sale for $3 that had been sitting in a New York living
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room, sold for $2.2 million at an auction. It turned out the family had bought a circa
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11th century piece of pottery from the Northern Song Dynasty and had just stuck it on their
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mantle for a few years. A bronze Egyptian cat from around 700 to 500 BCE was picked up at a house clearance and
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eventually sold for 52,000 pounds in 2015. The owners of the bronze cat were on the cusp
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of throwing the object away, but thankfully, they didn't. Then an expert from the British
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Museum verified it as authentic. Meow. In 2011, Thea Jordan wrote an article about a
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similar experience. She spent about 20 pounds on a brooch at an antique shop. Her daughter
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often wore it while playing dress-up. But when Jordan had her engagement ring looked at by a jeweler for insurance purposes, the jeweler noticed the brooch. It had potentially
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belonged to Russian royalty in the 19th century, and it sold for 32,450 pounds
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Vince Lombardi is arguably football royalty. He won two Super Bowls coaching the Green Bay Packers
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And while watching a documentary about Lombardi in 2014, Sean McAvoy of Tennessee noticed a sweater
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that looked familiar. He had bought Lombardi's sweater at Goodwill for 58 cents earlier in the year
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It ended up selling for $43,000. Another rare item of clothing in the world of sports
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is the Augusta National Green Jacket, given to the winner of the Masters tournament in golf
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Members of the Augusta National Club get jackets too, but only Masters champions can wear them outside the club
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And even then, only for one year. Well, in 1994, a golf fan found one at a thrift shop
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in Toronto that the club did verify was real. In 2017, it sold at an auction for about $139,000
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No word on whether or not the buyer's allowed to wear it outside though. In 2013 a watch from the James Bond movie Thunderball sold for 103 pounds It had been purchased for 25 pounds at a car boot sale which is basically a very British flea market involving car trunks It was a one piece created
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for the film. In 2006, Rob Walters went to a garage sale and bought a 1991 Nintendo Campus
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Challenge cartridge. It was a cartridge specifically created for Nintendo competitions, containing
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three games, Super Mario Bros. 3, Pinbot, and Dr. Mario. It should have been destroyed in 1991
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but for some reason it wasn't. Finding the cartridge was like finding a real-life warp whistle
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Walters eventually sold it for $14,000. Fun fact, Super Mario Bros. 2 is far superior to Super Mario
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Bros. 3, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And finally, if I can leave you with
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one piece of advice, it's always be looking for the Declaration of Independence. Two stories
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Story 1. In 1989, a man bought a torn painting of a countryside for its frame at a flea market
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in Pennsylvania. He paid $4. He discarded the picture and found a folded up Declaration
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of Independence, which was one of an estimated 200 original copies from 1776. Of those originals
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only 26 remain. In 1991, the man sold his historic fine for $2.42 million
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Story 2. In 2007, a copy of the Declaration from the 1820s sold for almost half a million
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dollars after a man bought it at a Tennessee thrift shop for about $2.50. He'd happened
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upon one of the 200 copies commissioned by John Quincy Adams. So why am I finishing with this story
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Well, it contains an important lesson. Because Stan Caffey had to discover this news, having been the one who donated the declaration
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to the thrift shop in the first place. He claimed he had come across it at a yard sale, but gave it away 10 years later after
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cleaning out his garage. So while you're Marie Kondo-ing, make sure you take an extra glance at your old copies
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of the declaration. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel and give us a like if you enjoyed the video
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We'll see you next time! 15-5, Vince Lombardi
