Original subtitles

[tense music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can be buried anywhere:

under the Earth,

[volcano booms]

beneath the sea,

[plane whooshes]

or even right under our own feet.

[coins jingle]

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes, what we find can change history.

[mysterious music]

Tonight,

a look back at some of the most valuable discoveries

we've ever featured,

from a lost royal masterpiece...

- These things sell for millions of dollars,

but there are eight of them that are missing.

- When he looks at this photograph of this

lost golden egg,

it seems like a dead ringer

for what's in his kitchen cabinet.

- [Danny] ...to a super secret stash...

- In David's hands is the Holy Grail of comic books.

- It's like the big bang for the modern-day superhero genre.

- [Danny] ...to an astonishing national treasure.

- There's something wedged

between the painting and the wood backing.

He takes it to Sotheby's to have it examined,

and their experts know immediately,

he's found something special.

- Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

[tense music]

Antiques, old clothes, dusty heirlooms,

that's all one woman thought she'd find

while cleaning out her dad's house.

But what she uncovered

turned out to be worth far more than just memories.

[tense music]

- It's 2004 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

and Susan Hendry-Chiro is going through the belongings

of her late father, Basil Hendry Sr.

They're going through antiques and old clothing

and some religious artwork that he had collected.

- Susan keeps a few paintings that have sentimental value

and then assigns the rest to a pile

that she's willing to sell,

including a dark, old, gloomy painting of Jesus Christ.

- So a year passes,

and Susan finally gets around

to having these paintings appraised.

The appraiser isn't really blown away by any of them,

but he thinks that that one of Jesus

could maybe get $750 from the right collector.

- [Danny] But when the painting hits the auction floor,

something happens that shocks everyone.

- The bidding starts low,

but several paddles go up, blasting past the $750 mark.

- [Adam] They start going above $2,000, $3,000,

and eventually, this painting sells

for roughly $10,000.

- [Danny] Susan pockets the money

and doesn't really think much more about it

until a few years later

when her phone starts ringing off the hook.

- Out of nowhere, members of the media begin calling Susan,

asking her about this Jesus painting

that she sold at auction.

They asked, "Where did you find it?"

"Where did it come from?"

And most importantly, "Did she know what she had?"

- [Danny] To most, it looked like just another old painting.

But as the new owners embark on a skilled restoration,

a very different story comes to light.

- [Austin] As they clean it up

and remove the dark layers of paint on the surface,

a new, different image starts to be revealed.

- [Geoffrey] The group takes infrared photographs

to get a better look at this image that's peeking through.

They see what's called a pentimento,

which is basically a tracing of an earlier piece.

- [Kavitha] There's a version underneath the painting

where Jesus' thumb is straight

instead of in a curved position.

- [Danny] Based on this, the new owners believe

they've uncovered a lost work

from one of the most famous artists of all time:

Leonardo da Vinci.

- [Kavitha] As it's carefully restored,

the piece becomes easily recognizable

as a missing da Vinci known as "Salvator Mundi,"

which translates to the "Savior of the World."

- [Danny] The revelation sparks a flurry of headlines.

How did such an important work of art

end up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?

- [Austin] Susan believes that her father acquired the painting

from her Aunt Millie,

but no one ever mentioned

that this painting was anything overtly special.

- [Danny] With little to go on,

experts dig deeper to better connect the dots.

- [Kavitha] Researchers track down records

from a Sotheby's auction in 1958

featuring the estate of James Cook,

the grandson of famous British art collector,

Sir Francis Cook.

- Sure enough, there's a record of Aunt Millie

buying this painting for 45 pounds,

roughly 120 bucks.

- [Danny] Once it's fully restored,

the "Salvator Mundi" goes back up for auction in 2017.

- Sold! [crowd cheers]

- This time, a member of the Saudi Royal family

buys it at auction

for $450 million,

making this once discarded painting

the most valuable piece of art in world history.

- [Kavitha] You'd think if you were spending

almost a half a billion dollars on a painting,

you'd wanna show it off,

but nobody's seen it since the sale.

- [Adam] The rumor is that it is in a high-security vault

somewhere in Switzerland.

And with the history of the "Salvator Mundi"

of appearing and disappearing,

we may never see it again.

Or maybe we will.

- Some treasures hang on the wall in plain sight.

Others turn up in the backyard, buried in dirt,

like this next story.

[tense music]

- In 1940, the Jones family of Peterstown, West Virginia

is internationally famous.

- Grover and Grace Jones are the equivalent

to modern-day celebrities,

and that's because they have 15 children.

But here's the kicker, all of them are boys.

- [Andrew] According to Ripley's Believe it or Not,

this is a world record.

- [Danny] But incredibly,

this won't be the family's biggest moment.

That starts a decade earlier

when Grover finds something unusual.

- Back in 1928, Grover is playing horseshoes

with his eldest son, whom they call "Punch."

During the game, one of Punch's tosses goes way off course,

and so Punch goes off to find the lost horseshoe.

- And he notices a cool-looking rock

sticking out of the ground.

- [Andrew] To Punch and his father,

this looks like a interesting piece of quartz,

which is common in that area of West Virginia.

So they put it in a cigar box,

put it on the shelf in the family shed,

and forget about it.

- [Danny] 14 years later,

Punch develops an interest in rocks

and remembers the piece of quartz he found with his dad.

- Punch reaches out to a geology professor named Roy Holden

at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

- [Sami] So Holden pulls out his magnification loop,

and when he gets a closer look,

he's stunned at what he finds.

This rock is not a piece of quartz;

it's an actual diamond.

- [Danny] More specifically,

it's a 34-carat alluvial diamond,

and it's the largest ever discovered in the United States.

- Alluvial diamond is the term we use for diamonds

that have been dislodged from their point of origin.

Erosion over millions of years washes them away

and then they settle in riverbanks

or on the ocean floor.

- [Danny] But alluvial diamonds this size

are found almost exclusively in Africa.

So, how did it find its way to a West Virginia backyard?

- Back in the 1920s, a circus comes to Peterstown.

And along with the bearded lady

and the carnival barker, was an African elephant.

- Perhaps the diamond was embedded in the elephant's foot

back in Africa,

then dislodged later in the US,

where it eventually winds up in Punch and Grover's backyard.

- [Sami] Bottom line, it's as good a guess as any,

because even Holden, the geologist,

can't seem to figure out this mystery.

But regardless of that, it's an incredibly lucky find.

- [Danny] Lucky or not, a rock like that

isn't gonna stay secret for long.

Word gets out, and soon, buyers are lining up.

- [Andrew] The diamond sells for just over $200,000

in today's currency.

It's purchased by an anonymous Asian buyer.

- [Don] There's not much known about 'em,

and for the last four decades,

the Punch diamond has gone completely underground.

- Nobody knows where it is, nobody knows who has it,

and nobody knows if we'll ever see it again.

- What begins as a casual stroll through a local swap meet

turns into the discovery of a lifetime for one lucky man.

[tense music]

- [Don] In 2004, a Midwestern scrap metal dealer

is at his local flea market,

hoping to find some undervalued materials to flip

and make a few bucks.

- In one stall,

he finds a 3-inch tall ornamented oval piece

that has a clock embedded on it,

and it sits on a small stand.

- He can tell that the item's made of real gold,

so he estimates the weight and decides to take a gamble.

He pays 13,000 for it.

That's a lot of money for him,

but he decides to take the chance.

Maybe he could sell it and make a few hundred bucks profit.

- [Danny] Back home, the man weighs the egg-shaped find

and realizes he's overestimated the amount of gold.

Unwilling to take the loss,

he puts it in his kitchen cupboard,

and it sits there for nearly a decade.

- [Don] In 2012, he's cleaning out his kitchen

and comes across the gold ornament.

He thinks, "Okay, it's time to get rid of this thing,

once and for all."

- [John] So he decides to do a little research,

and he enters the word "egg" into a search engine,

along with a name that he found

on the clock inside the ornament, Vacheron Constantin.

When the results come back, he can't believe his eyes.

- [Martin] One of the first results that he gets

is an article in Britain's "Daily Telegraph"

that questions,

"Is This £20 Million Nest Egg on Your Mantelpiece?"

- [Don] It seems crazy, but when he looks

at this old black-and-white photograph

of this lost golden egg,

it seems like a dead ringer

for what's in his kitchen cabinet.

- [Danny] The resemblance is uncanny,

but could his flea market find really be a rare Faberge egg?

- Faberge is one of the finest makers

of jewelry in the world,

but what they're most famous for is a series of jeweled eggs

that were made in the late 1800s and early 1900s

for members of the Russian Imperial family.

- [Don] Each one was a unique, beautiful work of art

that took Faberge's jewelers over a year to make.

Only 69 of them were ever made.

The most famous were a group of 50

known as the Imperial Easter eggs

that were made for the Russian czars

to be given as Easter gifts

to their mothers and wives.

- [John] These things sell for millions of dollars.

They're certainly not the kind of thing

you'd expect to find at a flea market.

Most of them have been accounted for,

but there are eight of them that are missing,

and that makes them even more valuable.

- [Danny] Eager to find out if this is, in fact,

one of the missing Imperial Easter eggs,

the scrap metal dealer flies to London

to meet with expert Kieran McCarthy.

- [Martin] As soon as this American pulls out his artifact,

McCarthy's jaw hits the floor.

This is an actual lost Imperial Easter egg

from Czar Alexander III.

- [Danny] So, how could such a priceless treasure

end up at a Midwestern flea market?

- [Martin] Initially, the egg belonged to the Romanov dynasty

before it was overthrown by the communists

in the October 1917 Revolution.

[explosion booms]

- Most experts believe that the egg was stolen

sometime after the revolution

and fell into the hands of some western collector.

But after that, the story gets really cloudy.

- [Danny] Then, in 2011, the egg resurfaces.

- A Faberge researcher found a photo of the egg,

which, in 1964, in New York,

was sold at an auction for the Rena Clark estate.

It went for $2,450.

Not much is known about Clark,

and there's no information on whoever bought the egg.

- We do know that the egg was only described

as "gold watch in egg-form case."

It's likely the person who bought this

had no idea about the artifact's actual value.

So when that person passed away,

it went into a donation pile.

- [Danny] From there, the egg slips through unknown hands

until it turns up at that flea market.

When it's finally put up for sale in 2014,

it's bought by a private dealer.

- [Don] While we don't know the exact amount

our scrap metal dealer got for his egg,

insiders believe that this $13,000 flea market find

could've sold for as much as $33 million,

which would make it the most expensive

Faberge egg ever sold.

- That royal egg shows us how far treasures can travel.

Our next find proves sometimes, a big payday

can be hiding much closer to home.

[tense music]

- [Sami] In 2013, in the small town of Elbow Lake, Minnesota,

a guy by the name of David Gonzalez

buys a home that was built in 1938 for $10,100.

He's a house flipper.

And while the house has good bones, that's about it.

[jack hammer whirs]

- [Kavitha] He begins demo on the investment property,

but he soon notices something strange within the walls.

- [Steve] The house isn't insulated like you would expect.

It's not foam or fiberglass.

There's a lot of crumpled newspapers in between the studs.

- [Sami] Now, for David, this is just another day at the office,

so he starts pulling out the crumpled pieces of newspaper,

section by section, until he sees something colorful

in between all of that black and white.

- He pulls it out from the newspapers

and realizes it's a comic book,

and on the cover is none other

than the Man of Steel himself, Superman.

- [Austin] The comic is showing its age.

It's beat up on the corners, it's yellowed.

But David immediately notices something startling:

the date on the cover, June 1938,

the same year the house was built.

- David isn't a comic book collector,

but he obviously knows that Superman

is one of the most iconic comic book heroes of all time.

So he figures a really old Superman comic

has to be worth something.

- [Danny] David leaves the newspapers in a pile

and jumps online.

What he finds nearly knocks him off his feet.

- [Sami] In David's hands is "Action Comics #1."

This is the Holy Grail of comic books.

- [Steve] This comic isn't just the origin story of Superman,

it's like the big bang for the modern-day superhero genre,

- [Danny] But before it kickstarted

a billion-dollar superhero empire,

"Action Comics #1"

was just another novelty on the newsstand.

- Back in 1938 when "Action Comics #1" was released,

it was selling for about 10 cents a copy,

which in today's money is around two bucks.

- [Austin] At the time, nobody would've thought

anything of its worth

beyond its inherent entertainment value.

You read it, you enjoy it, you throw it out,

or in this case, stuff it inside the walls of a new house.

- [Kavitha] Around 200,000 copies were originally printed,

and today, only about 100 are believed to still exist.

So David could be sitting on a gold mine

worth far more than the house flip.

- [Sami] Needless to say, the man is thrilled,

and so he brings it home,

and he wants to show it off to his family,

and they're all just as excited.

- [Austin] They invite friends and more family

to come over and see this rare find.

And everything is going well until his wife's aunt shows up.

She grabs "Action Comics #1"

and starts waving it around.

David attempts to grab it back.

- [Danny] In the chaos of the moment, the back cover rips.

- [Sami] Damaged or not, this is still

one of the most sought-after comic books in the world,

so David puts it away for safekeeping

until he can put it up for sale at auction.

- [Austin] Even in less than perfect condition,

it sells for a whopping $175,000.

But experts think that the tear cost David

anywhere between 50- and $75,000.

- [Sami] So without that tear,

this copy of "Action Comics #1" could've sold

for a quarter of a million dollars.

Thanks, auntie.

- [Kavitha] It was a costly mistake,

but David bought the house for just over $10,000,

and he's walking away with more than 17 times that

from something that he literally pulled out of the wall.

- All in all, it's a much better return

than any house he could've flipped.

- Most people come to Yosemite for the trees,

but in the '70s,

some folks came looking for greener treasure.

[tense music]

- [Adam] In the winter of 1977,

a man named Ron Lykins and his friends

were all waiters at the famous Ahwahnee Hotel

in Yosemite National Park.

They decide, on their day off,

that they are going to go snowshoeing

into the frozen tundra of the Yosemite backcountry.

- [John] About six miles into their hike,

they spot something surprising.

It's a debris trail.

And then, suddenly, they encounter an airplane wing

just sitting out there in the snow.

They head back and report it to the park rangers,

and before along, officials from four government agencies

swarm to the area.

- [Adam] They follow the debris trail

and eventually come to a twin engine plane in a frozen lake.

- [Danny] Officials fire up chainsaws

and start cutting it out of the ice.

When they cut open the cargo hold,

they see something incredible.

- They find marijuana, literally tons of it.

They estimate there are 6,000 pounds of weed in the hold.

Authorities spend the next week hauling

bundles of it out of the Yosemite Valley.

- [Danny] Unfortunately, their work is cut short

when a huge snow storm rolls in.

- A full wintertime salvage operation

would be too hazardous,

so the feds have to press pause on the entire operation

and wait for the spring.

- Before they leave for the season,

they run the tail number to ID the plane.

It belongs to a guy named Jon Glisky,

who's been on the DEA's radar for a while.

He's a former army helicopter pilot in Vietnam,

and now a full-time smuggler.

- [Danny] Authorities contact Glisky's wife,

and she shares what she knows.

- She confirms that about a month earlier,

on the night before the crash,

he loads up three tons of weed

at a dusty airstrip in Baja

and, under the cover of darkness,

flies it into the United States.

- [Danny] But the run ends in disaster.

[alarm blares]

Glisky's plane goes down in Yosemite,

[plane crashes]

leaving both men dead

and three tons of marijuana entombed in ice.

- Some people overhear off-duty DEA agents at a bar

talking about how they had to leave this wreck until spring

with tons of drugs still inside.

- Among those who hear it are three anonymous hikers

who race to the scene days later.

When they reach the plane,

one of them sticks his arm into a hole next to the cockpit

and pulls out a plastic-wrapped bale.

- [Danny] Now word spreads like wildfire,

and in the days that follow,

a stream of hikers brave the elements to get to the goods

at what they're calling Dope Lake.

- [Adam] Dozens and dozens of hikers

make the 32-mile round trip.

Some of them carry out 200-pound loads of marijuana

worth about $50,000 at the time.

In just one week,

over a half a million dollars of marijuana goes missing

at the hands of opportunistic Yosemite hikers.

- [Danny] Rangers launch a surprise raid

but only nab two hikers.

All of the true culprits are never identified,

and the crime slowly fades from memory.

- It's one of the wildest forgotten stories

in American crime history.

But for a brief window in the '70s,

Dope Lake turned Yosemite

into the most lucrative hiking trail on the planet.

- 5,000 miles away, in the UK,

another machine hides a hoard even more valuable.

[tense music]

- [Andrew] British businessman Nick Mead

has an unusual enterprise,

a company called Tanks a Lot.

[metal squeaking]

- They purchase decommissioned military tanks

from all over the world,

and they rent them out for special events,

weddings, kids' birthday parties.

And for $3,000,

he'll even give you a guided tour around London.

- So it's fair to say that Nick's a tank guy

and he's always on the lookout for something new

to add to his fleet.

- [Alex] One day while he's browsing online,

Nick comes across a real score.

It's an ex-Iraqi military Type 69 main battle tank

that was used in the Gulf War.

- [Geoffrey] This is a tank with a lot of power,

that has 100-millimeter main gun

and a 12.7-millimeter machine gun.

And believe it or not,

Nick gets it for less than the price

of a lot of new cars, $37,000.

- [Andrew] When the Iraqi tank arrives,

Nick and his mechanic dive right in.

And when they get to the gas tank,

they find it's remarkably heavy.

- They're excited, but also very cautious.

- If you can lift a bit...

- What's in there? - What is it?

- What the-- - No.

- Inside the fuel tank, there are five gold bars

with an estimated cash value of $2.4 million.

- [Danny] Oil has been called liquid gold,

but how did actual gold end up in this tank?

- In August of 1990, during the first Gulf War,

[explosions booming]

Iraqi troops storm into Kuwait

and loot almost everything inside.

They steal the gold bath fixtures from the Emir's palace.

They take computers,

they take rare antiquities and Islamic art.

They even take animals from the Royal Zoo.

[horns honk] [people cheering]

- [Alex] But their celebration is short-lived.

US forces intervene and liberate Kuwait in February 1991.

And the return of the looted merchandise

becomes a crucial part of the peace negotiations.

- [Geoffrey] Six months after the end of the conflict,

the Iraqis returned about 3,200 gold bars to Kuwait

under UN supervision,

and that gold was worth a whopping $700 million.

- [Danny] But it seems not everything is sent back.

- [Alex] The Iraqi troops do their best

to hide their plunder,

and the gas tank of an armored vehicle

seems as good as any place to hide their loot.

- [Martin] Then, eventually, the vehicle makes its way

to Great Britain,

where it's purchased by a young mechanic

who puts new tracks on the vehicle and repairs the engine,

but he never checks the gas tank before selling it to Nick.

- To his credit, when he discovers the gold bars,

Nick reports them to the authorities.

British authorities show up, they take the gold bars,

and they give Nick a receipt.

- [Martin] This is all done with the explanation

that they're going to find the rightful owner

and return the gold bars to that owner,

but it's been over seven years now,

and as far as Nick knows,

the gold bars have not been returned

to their original owner.

- [Andrew] He even tells reporters

that he regrets turning the gold over to the cops

and feels that he should, at the very least,

have got a finder's fee.

- At a flea market, one man spends four bucks

on an old frame.

What he finds inside

is a priceless piece of American history.

[tense music]

- [Martin] While browsing at a local flea market

in Adamstown, Pennsylvania,

a man spots a dull and worn painting of a country scene.

But he's not interested in the painting;

he's interested in the frame that's around it.

- It's gilded and ornately carved,

and he wants it for a different picture he already has.

So this guy plunks down $4 and buys it.

- [Danny] The man takes it home

and begins to remove the painting from the frame.

That's when he sees something strange.

- [Alex] There's something wedged

between the painting and the wood backing.

It's about the size of an envelope.

He unfolds it and he realizes

it's the Declaration of Independence.

- [Don] He doesn't think much of this at first.

I mean, it's the Declaration of Independence,

and there are copies of this everywhere,

but it looks like a pretty old copy.

- [Danny] Curiously, this copy contains

no signatures by the Founding Fathers.

- [Martin] He has a friend who's a bit of a history buff

who encourages him to go and get it appraised,

just in the off chance

that this might be something valuable.

- [Alex] He takes it to Sotheby's to have it examined,

and their experts know immediately,

he's found something special.

- [Danny] It's not just any copy

of the Declaration of Independence,

it's a pristine first edition.

- When we think of the Declaration of Independence,

we think of the signed version of the document.

But that version was actually signed

and completed on August 2nd, 1776,

four weeks after

the original Declaration of Independence was issued.

- [Don] You see, when the Continental Congress

adopts the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776,

it has a Philadelphia printer, John Dunlap,

print 200 copies that evening

to carry the news of independence out to the people.

- Over the next few days, they're distributed

to several colonial assemblies and leaders,

including George Washington,

and they become known as the Dunlap Broadsides.

- [Danny] But how did this priceless document

end up behind a painting?

- [Alex] In 1776, the colonies were still under British rule.

Having a copy of the Declaration of Independence

in your back pocket would lead to treason.

So some theorized that the original owners

stashed it behind the frame to hide it from the British.

- [Don] Most of the Dunlap copies are owned

by institutions mostly in America, a few in the UK,

but this is only the third to be held in private hands.

So when it goes up for auction at Sotheby's in 1991,

it sells for $2.4 million.

This is the highest price ever paid

for a piece of Americana at the time

and a heck of a return on a $4 investment.

- This next valuable find

holds the words of another American original.

[tense music]

- [Sami] In 1990, Barbara Testa is going through some old boxes

and bags in her attic.

As she digs and rummages through the clutter,

she comes across some old family letters

and some of her grandmother's handwritten poems

in an old steamer trunk.

- But then, Barbara pauses.

Tucked between the familiar stories and memories are pages

in a handwriting she doesn't recognize.

- [Sami] As she's reading the pages,

they appear to be a part of a manuscript,

and the words are becoming more and more familiar.

"Right is right and wrong is wrong,

and a body ain't got no business doing wrong

when he ain't ignorant and knows better."

- [Danny] Barbara's uncovered a handwritten manuscript

of Mark Twain's masterpiece,

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

- [Hugo] Barbara reaches out to Sotheby's,

who sends an armored truck to her home to collect the book.

- Sotheby's works with a Mark Twain papers project

at UC Berkeley.

They compare the handwriting, style, and structure

to other, authenticated Mark Twain manuscripts.

- [Danny] Sure enough, the handwriting matches perfectly,

but there's a twist.

It's only half the book.

The rest is missing.

- Barbara tells the researchers that her grandfather,

James Frasier Gluck,

was the curator of a library in Buffalo, New York,

and the man was a zealous collector.

- Researchers discover that back in the mid-1880s,

Gluck had contacted Samuel L. Clemens,

better known as Mark Twain,

requesting the manuscript for his collection.

- Twain, who was a former resident of Buffalo, New York,

agreed to send Gluck the handwritten manuscript

of a "Huckleberry Finn,"

but he only finds the second half of the book.

So that's what he sends over to Gluck,

which remains in the library to this day.

- And that's where the story is thought to end.

But it turns out, in 1887,

unbeknownst to everybody,

Twain did find the first half, and he sent it to Gluck,

except for some reason,

it never makes it into the Buffalo Library's collection

to join the second half of the book.

- Twain lovers are ecstatic,

and so are Barbara and her sister,

who plan on auctioning it off to make a pretty penny.

- [Danny] But before the bidding even starts,

they get a notice from the Buffalo Public Library,

claiming they own the rights

to Barbara's half of the manuscript.

- [Hugo] While Barbara wants to sell the book,

the library wants to keep it

with the other half in their collection.

After some legal back and forth,

the two sides finally reach a deal.

- [Sami] Barbara and her sister get a finder's fee

of $1 million,

and the library promises

to put Twain's complete manuscript on display,

just as her grandfather intended.

So all in all, everybody ends up getting what they want,

114 years later.

- Sometimes, the most valuable finds

are the ones we overlook.

Take this next story about a rare piece of American history.

[tense music]

- March 1962,

56-year-old George Walton is driving in heavy rain

in North Carolina,

[horn honks] [tires screech]

when his car collides head-on with another vehicle.

Tragically, he doesn't survive the crash.

- [Steve] The police arrive, and it's a mess.

There's glass, there's metal,

there's just debris everywhere.

But there's something unusual scattered around the highway.

[coins jingling]

- Dozens upon dozens of coins,

but these aren't just regular nickels and dimes.

- The coins look old and really unfamiliar to the officers,

so they pick them up along with George's other belongings.

George was a bachelor,

and so his estate gets managed by his siblings,

and ultimately, his coins get sent

to an auction house to sell.

- [Danny] It turns out George's quiet hobby

is worth a fortune,

and his collection sells for a staggering $875,000.

- [Adam] But not all the coins are sold.

One of them is a 1913 Liberty nickel,

one of the rarest coins in history.

- [Danny] This 5 cent piece is engraved

with a likeness of Libertas,

also known as the Goddess of Liberty,

whose image originates from ancient Roman coins.

- Liberty nickels officially stopped being released in 1912,

but in 1913,

a Mint employee named Samuel W. Brown

ended up secretly striking five of these

to sell on the black market.

- [Austin] Over the years, four of them have been located,

but the elusive fifth Liberty nickel has yet to be found.

- [Danny] The nickel has all the markings

of a historic discovery,

until experts take a closer look.

- [Austin] Unfortunately, the coin is determined to be a fake.

George's siblings take the forgery, put it in a closet,

and forget about it.

- [Danny] Dismissed and forgotten,

the nickel stays buried for decades,

until a 2003 coin convention in Baltimore

puts it back in the spotlight.

- The main attraction is that this coin convention

is featuring the 1913 Liberty nickel.

- The organizers of the show put out a call to the public,

hoping that someone might come forward with the final coin,

and that's when George's family starts to wonder,

should they give the fake coin one last look?

- [Adam] So they dig it out, head to the convention,

and in a secret room at the Baltimore Convention Center,

six experts compare their nickel with the other four,

including one that has been authenticated

by the Smithsonian.

And it turns out the so-called fake

is actually real

and one of the most sought-after coins in history.

- [Austin] In the 1940s,

George purchased the coin for $3,750.

He held onto it for years,

and in 1962, he packed it up alongside his collection

and drove them to a coin convention.

Sadly, he never made it, dying in that fatal car crash.

- [Danny] In 2013,

George's family puts the Liberty nickel up for auction,

and it sells for $3.2 million.

- [Adam] All told, George's collection

brings in over $4 million.

A nickel that everyone thought was worthless

turns out to be priceless.

So as they say, don't take any wooden nickels,

but buy all the rare ones you can.

- Not all treasures are hidden.

Sometimes, they stare you right in the face

every night at dinner,

which is exactly what happened

to three brothers in 2015.

[tense music]

- The Landau brothers hated the painting

that was in their dining room in their childhood home.

They found it kind of creepy.

- [Andrew] It depicts an unconscious young man

being tended to by two people, one of whom

is trying to resuscitate the youth with smelling salts.

- According to family lore,

the grandfather bought the painting

before the Great Depression at an estate sale

and handed it down from generation to generation.

- [Andrew] In 2011, after the brothers' parents die,

the painting ends up in the basement,

where it's forgotten for several years.

- [Danny] Then in 2015,

the brothers decide it's time to clean out the basement.

And when they rediscover the painting,

they reach out to a professional appraiser, John Nye.

- [Andrew] Nye is not impressed with the painting,

which he calls, "remarkably unremarkable,"

but he thinks it might be worth something.

- [Sami] So he goes, "Okay, on a good day,

maybe we'll get 500 to $800."

So in 2015, Nye and company set up the painting for auction.

- Now, the brothers are not expecting

anything to come of this.

Their expectations are, in fact, so low

that they don't attend the auction.

- [Bryant] The auction goes pretty much the way

Nye thought it would at first.

The bidding starts at $250,

then it goes to $500.

- [Danny] Then all hell breaks loose.

- A French bidder jumps in at $5,000.

Suddenly, we have an international

bidding war on our hands.

8,000, 10,000.

- Now this painting is reaching into six-figure region,

100,000, 200,000.

- [Andrew] The bids continue to go up.

[gavel bangs]

- When the final gavel strikes,

a French dealer walks away with this painting

for $1.1 million.

Needless to say, John Nye

is in complete shock.

- [Danny] It turns out, Nye missed an important detail

on this work of art.

- In the upper right-hand corner of the painting,

there appears to be some writing,

but it's hard to make it out.

The dealers think the writing is a monogram

that spells out RHF.

- [Sami] Rembrandt Harmenszoon fecit,

which stands for "Rembrandt, son of Harmen, made this."

- [Andrew] The French dealer believes

that this is one of Rembrandt's "Senses,"

a series that the artist produced early in his career

when he was only 18 years old.

The five senses being a popular theme at the time

for artists to depict,

this painting depicts the sense of smell.

- [Bryant] The French dealer gets the painting,

he has it authenticated,

and it turns out that it is one of the missing Rembrandts.

- [Danny] That $1.1 million windfall

turns out to be nothing compared to what happens next.

- The dealer now turns around

and sells it to Thomas Kaplan,

who is a collector of fine art

from the Dutch golden age.

And it's reported that Kaplan buys it for around $4 million,

which is a profit of $3 million to the French dealer.

- For Kaplan, the painting is invaluable.

He already has three

of the other Rembrandt "Senses" paintings,

and the last one about taste is still missing.

- [Andrew] So if you have a creepy painting

hanging in your dining room

depicting a woman tasting something,

might be worth having that appraised.

[gavel bangs]

- A frame, a wall, a backyard, or a flea market.

Keep your eyes open,

because sometimes, valuable treasures

have a way of finding you.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.