Incredible treasures found in the trash

Strike it rich just by taking out the garbage? After reading these stories of unique finds you might want to keep a closer eye on what you throw out.

Baseball cards

While sifting through the cluttered Defiance, Ohio, home of their recently deceased aunt, Karl Kissner and his sister found a treasure trove -- millions of dollars worth of 100-year-old baseball cards.

When Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions, first learned about the cards, he was skeptical. Cards like the ones Kissner described were extremely rare, so he asked Kissner to send a few cards over to Heritage so he could take a closer look. "Our jaws hit the floor when we saw those initial eight cards that they sent," Ivy said. They were the real deal, and Ivy estimated that they would make Kissner and his family over $2 million. It turns out that Ivy's estimate was on the low end -- only a quarter of the cards have yet been sold at auction, but they brought in a tidy $1.5 million

Rare coin

There are only five known specimens of the 1913 Liberty Head nickel, but until 2003, one of those nickels was lost. The coin's last known owner was a collector named George O. Walton, who died in a car crash on his way to a coin show in 1962. His children recovered the Liberty Head nickel from the crash site, but it was later incorrectly labeled counterfeit and remained forgotten in a Virginia closet for 40 years.

In July 2003, Walton's heirs took it to an American Numismatic Association (ANA) convention that was displaying the four other 1913 Liberty Head nickels. "(The nickel) was graded on-site and authenticated on-site, and lo and behold, all of a sudden the long-lost fifth Liberty Head nickel had been found," said Jake Sherlock, marketing and communications director for the ANA. The nickel was auctioned off in 2012 for $3.17 million.

Romanov portrait

While renovating an 18th-century home in St. Petersburg, Russia, in August 2013, three workers found a painted portrait of a young boy, rolled up in newspapers that dated back to about 1917. The boy is believed to be Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, the only son of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II. Nicholas II and his family, including Alexei, were executed in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution, when Alexei was only 13 years old.

The painting, which now resides at the Tsarkoye Selo State Museum-Preserve in Pushkin, Russia, depicts a younger Alexei, and appears to have been painted from an official portrait taken of the Tsarevich in 1913. "Our researchers are still working on the attribution of the portrait," said Irina Nacharova, a spokeswoman for the museum. Since many details surrounding the painting are still a mystery, there is no sure estimate for how much the painting could sell for.

Titanic violin

On April 15, 1912, as the RMS Titanic sank into freezing waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, music could be heard coming from its deck. Some survivors recall a small band playing the soothing "Nearer, My God, to Thee," as the ocean liner went down. Wallace Hartley, the violinist, perished with the ship. His violin somehow survived.

The violin traded hands numerous times after it left the Titanic until 2006, when the instrument ended up in the hands of Andrew and Alan Aldridge. The father-son team behind Henry Aldridge and Son, an auction house in England that deals in nautical memorabilia, were able to finally authenticate the violin for what it is in 2013, and to begin to look for buyers.

"We have not formulated the final sale estimate as yet but it will be certainly be six figures," said Andrew Aldridge, suggesting the violin will fetch upward of $160,000. 

From: MSN.com/ Posted by Mags