An interesting story in Britain: it is 80 years ago, after World War II. A man from Somerset runs a scrap-metal business, making barely enough money to feed his family and build his house. (No extravagant massage therapy schools for this family!). 
He comes across an odd-looking bronze cup. Deeming it too beautiful for scrap, he saves the cup in a box with other oddities, for his grandchildren to play with when they visit. The old man dies, leaving the box of old toys and oddities for one of the grandsons.
Fast-forward to 2008. The grandson is now a grandfather himself, and is going through his old storage boxes. He discovers that old bronze cup he used to play with as a child. Curious, he sends the old cup to the British Museum for examination. The tests results: the cup is 22-carat gold, not bronze, and dates back to the Achaemenid Persian Empire period– three decades before the birth of Christ.
Wow! How I wish I could find something like that in my backyard! Read more of the story here. The cup recently sold for half a million pounds in an auction.
Hat tip Lofty Matters for the story.
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Tags: Achaemenid, gold, Persian, treasure
June 21st, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Oh why can’t I ever find stuff like that. I heard a story on NPR about a woman finding a valuable painting in the trash. All I ever find are plastic things with made in China stamped on the back.
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 am
What a find! Yeah I wish I could find stuff like that too. Hey you never know something I’ve got lying round might be valuable (I can dream)
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:08 am
That’s insane! All those years that poor guy had a fortune and didn’t know it. Sounds like something that would happen to me. I guess he shoulda taken it to Antiques Roadshow for an appraisal…LoL
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:58 am
Yeah - isn’t that just wild? I need to follow up to see what it ended up going for in the auction. I think it was held a few weeks ago.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:19 am
It is a beautiful cup too. A half million pounds huh? That’s a lot of cash to get all at once!
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Okay….let’s start going through old boxes to see if there’s any relic like this..hhehe. Thankfully, the man sent the cup to the museum instead of trashing it.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
That wouldn’t happen to me because I recycle most of my trash into useful things for my house. The stuff I throw out in the rubbish bin in just trash.