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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:19our own feet. And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:30Tonight, lost national treasures from a grand slam score at a garage sale.
00:38Most people wouldn't give this old wooden bat a second look, but Bruce grew up watching
00:44the game and something about this bat just seems really familiar to him.
00:49To an American masterpiece sealed behind a secret wall.
00:54He's afraid of losing the painting in the settlement, so he secretly makes a copy.
01:00Even the staff at the Norman Rockwell Museum thought they had the original.
01:03To a discarded piece of Hollywood history.
01:07This thing is incredibly detailed and it doesn't really seem like a trash can at all.
01:12It gets Todd thinking, could this be a prop from the actual Star Wars movie?
01:19Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:34Everyone knows flipping houses comes with risks, but for one man, a routine renovation leads
01:41to something unexpected, a discovery that blows the roof off his expectations.
01:50In 2013, in the small town of Elbow Lake, Minnesota, a guy by the name of David Gonzalez buys a home
01:56that was built in 1938 for $10,100.
02:01He's a house flipper, and while the house has good bones, that's about it.
02:08He begins demo on the investment property, but he soon notices something strange within
02:14the walls.
02:16The house isn't insulated like you would expect.
02:18It's not foam or fiberglass.
02:20There's a lot of crumpled newspapers in between the studs.
02:23Now for David, this is just another day at the office.
02:26So he starts pulling out the crumpled pieces of newspapers section by section, until he
02:31sees something colorful in between all of that black and white.
02:36He pulls it out from the newspapers and realizes it's a comic book.
02:40And on the cover is none other than the Man of Steel himself, Superman.
02:47The comic is showing its age.
02:49It's beat up on the corners.
02:51It's yellowed.
02:52But David immediately notices something startling.
02:55To date on the cover, June 1938, the same year the house was built.
03:01David isn't a comic book collector, but he obviously knows that Superman is one of the
03:06most iconic comic book heroes of all time.
03:10So he figures a really old Superman comic has to be worth something.
03:16David leaves the newspapers in a pile and jumps online.
03:20What he finds nearly knocks him off his feet.
03:26This comic isn't just the origin story of Superman.
03:38It's like the big bang for the modern day superhero genre.
03:41Without Action 1, you don't get Batman.
03:44You don't get Wonder Woman.
03:45You don't get Spider-Man.
03:46You don't get all of DC Comics, Marvel Comics.
03:49You don't get superhero comics at all.
03:52But before it kick-started a billion-dollar superhero empire, Action Comics No. 1 was just another novelty on the newsstand.
04:03Back in 1938, when Action Comics No. 1 was released, it was selling for about 10 cents a copy, which in today's money is around two bucks.
04:10At the time, nobody would have thought anything of its worth beyond its inherent entertainment value.
04:18You read it, you enjoy it, you throw it out, or in this case, stuff it inside the walls of a new house.
04:24Around 200,000 copies were originally printed, and today, only about 100 are believed to still exist.
04:31So David could be sitting on a gold mine worth far more than the house flip.
04:36Needless 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.
04:43They 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.
04:54She grabs Action Comics No. 1 and starts waving it around.
05:00David attempts to grab it back.
05:02In the chaos of the moment, the back cover rips.
05:09Damaged or not, this is still one of the most sought-after comic books in the world.
05:15So David puts it away for safekeeping until he can put it up for sale at auction.
05:21Even in less than perfect condition, it sells for a whopping $175,000.
05:25But experts think that the tear cost David anywhere between $50,000 and $75,000.
05:35So without that tear, this copy of Action Comics No. 1 could have sold for a quarter of a million dollars.
05:42Thanks, Auntie.
05:43It 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.
05:56All in all, it's a much better return than any house he could have flipped.
06:00Meanwhile, in the heart of Iowa, another sharp-eyed citizen makes a major league discovery, hiding in plain sight.
06:15In 2013, Bruce Skopecky visits a garage sale in Des Moines, Iowa.
06:21He's a history buff, and he likes to see if there's anything of historical value that he can then resell for pocket money.
06:29He's not looking for anything in particular, but as he comes to the table full of sports gear, he spots something interesting.
06:36It's an old, beaten-up wooden baseball bat tucked underneath a few other metal ones.
06:42The price tag for this bat is a dollar.
06:44Now, most people wouldn't give this old, wooden bat a second look, but Bruce grew up watching the game, and something about this bat just seems really familiar to him.
06:57The grip of this bat is very distinctive.
07:00It has a thick handle and base with a unique knob.
07:04And that's when it hits him.
07:06He's seen a bat like this before.
07:09Bruce is a baseball nut.
07:10He knows most players' names are burned into the barrel of the bat, and he has a sneaking suspicion of whose name is on this one.
07:19Excitedly, he approaches the woman running the sale, Sue McEnany.
07:23He asks for a pencil.
07:24She hands one over, and Bruce gently rubs the pencil over the barrel of the bat.
07:31Suddenly, something extraordinary happens.
07:34As if by magic, a name slowly appears.
07:39Jackie Robinson.
07:40In the 1940s and 50s, Jackie Robinson played 10 seasons in Major League Baseball.
07:48He was a lifetime 313 hitter, a World Series champion, and now a Hall of Famer.
07:53But today, he's much more known for breaking all kinds of barriers.
07:58Jackie Robinson was the first Black American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era.
08:04So he changed not only baseball, but the country forever.
08:09Robinson's legacy is legendary, so how did his bat end up at a Midwestern garage sale?
08:16It turns out Sue's uncle, Joe Hatton, also known as Lefty Joe, pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1946 to 51.
08:24When Bruce discovers Jackie Robinson's name on the bat, Sue starts to connect the dots.
08:32Her uncle Joe played five seasons for the Dodgers alongside Robinson and was even the starting pitcher on the day that Robinson broke the color barrier during his Major League Baseball debut.
08:42The two weren't just teammates, they were friends, they even roomed together on the road, something a lot of Jackie's white teammates wouldn't do at the time.
08:51Sometime in their playing days, he must have been gifted the Jackie Robinson bat or traded for it because he ended up with it.
09:00It seems crazy, but Sue just assumed that this was just one of Uncle Joe's old bats.
09:07She even let her kids use it to hit balls and rocks around when they were younger.
09:11Thankfully, all that backyard batting didn't take a hit on its value.
09:16Sue gets the bat appraised and the result is a grand slam.
09:21In its current condition, it's worth about $20,000.
09:24But it could be worth even more if she has it professionally restored.
09:29Sue has no plans to sell the bat, saying it's something that belongs to our family.
09:35It's incredible to think how close she was to parting with this precious artifact.
09:40But thanks only to the kindness of a stranger who was doing the right thing, this American treasure remains in her family's hands.
09:54Sometimes the most valuable finds are the ones we overlook.
09:58Take this next story about a rare piece of American history.
10:03March 1962, 56-year-old George Walton is driving in heavy rain in North Carolina.
10:20When his car collides head-on with another vehicle.
10:23Tragically, he doesn't survive the crash.
10:26The police arrive and it's a mess.
10:29There's glass.
10:30There's metal.
10:31There's just debris everywhere.
10:33But there's something unusual scattered around the highway.
10:39Dozens upon dozens of coins.
10:41But these aren't just regular nickels and dimes.
10:44The coins look old and really unfamiliar to the officers, so they pick them up along with George's other belongings.
10:50George was a bachelor, and so his estate gets managed by his siblings, and ultimately his coins get sent to an auction house to sell.
10:58It turns out, George's quiet hobby is worth a fortune.
11:02And his collection sells for a staggering $875,000.
11:09But not all the coins are sold.
11:10One of them is a 1913 Liberty Nickel, one of the rarest coins in history.
11:16This five-cent piece is engraved with a likeness of Libertas, also known as the Goddess of Liberty, whose image originates from ancient Roman coins.
11:29Liberty Nickels officially stopped being released in 1912.
11:33But in 1913, a mint employee named Samuel W. Brown ended up secretly striking five of these to sell on the black market.
11:41Over the years, four of them have been located, but the elusive fifth Liberty Nickel has yet to be found.
11:48The nickel has all the markings of a historic discovery until experts take a closer look.
11:56Unfortunately, the coin is determined to be a fake.
12:00George's siblings take the forgery, put it in a closet, and forget about it.
12:04Dismissed and forgotten, the nickel stays buried for decades until a 2003 coin convention in Baltimore puts it back in the spotlight.
12:17The main attraction is that this coin convention is featuring the 1913 Liberty Nickel.
12:25The organizers of the show put out a call to the public hoping that someone might come forward with the final coin.
12:32And that's when George's family starts to wonder, should they give the fake coin one last look?
12:39So 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.
12:54And it turns out the so-called fake is actually real and one of the most sought-after coins in history.
13:02In the 1940s, George purchased the coin for $3,750.
13:09He held onto it for years, and in 1962, he packed it up alongside his collection and drove them to a coin convention.
13:17Sadly, he never made it, dying in that fatal car crash.
13:22In 2013, George's family puts the Liberty Nickel up for auction, and it sells for $3.2 million.
13:30All told, George's collection brings in over $4 million.
13:37A nickel everyone thought was worthless turns out to be priceless.
13:42So, as they say, don't take any wooden nickels, but buy all the rare ones you can.
13:50Not all treasures shine. Some are hiding on a dusty shelf, just waiting for the right person to find them.
13:57On February 19, 1988, a fisherman wanders into a New Hampshire book barn.
14:06It's basically an old rustic shop full of used books.
14:10Amid all the mundane stacks of old and used whatever, he finds a beaten up old copy of Tamerlane and other poems.
14:21But strangely, the author is not listed by name.
14:26It says it was written by a Bostonian.
14:28It just so happens that the fisherman had recently read about Tamerlane, which happens to be one of Edgar Allan Poe's earliest works.
14:37So, he figures for 15 bucks, he might as well own this 40-page poem.
14:42Back home, the fisherman's curiosity gets the better of him, and he can't get past the fact that if this is an Edgar Allan Poe book, why is it not attributed to Edgar Allan Poe?
14:52There can't be two 40-page epic poems called Tamerlane.
14:58So, he starts doing a little bit of digging.
15:01When he first published Tamerlane in 1827, Poe was an 18-year-old nobody, so he published it anonymously under the pseudonym a Bostonian, hoping it would lend air of mystery.
15:16He only has about 50 copies printed, and he sends them off to critics, and ultimately no one is really interested, and most of the copies sort of vanish into obscurity.
15:29By 1988, there are only 11 known copies to exist.
15:34Later publications of Tamerlane do include Poe's name on it, but this first edition is so rare, so sought after by collectors, they call it the Black Tulip of Love.
15:46Could it be possible this is one of those rare first editions?
15:51The fisherman doesn't know for sure, but the book looks old, and his research has been exciting him, so he calls the Sotheby's Boston office.
16:00Their response is immediate.
16:02They dispatch an armored car to his house and take the book to their New York City headquarters.
16:07The Sotheby's experts meticulously compare his version with the other 11 known versions.
16:15They check the paper quality, the typography, even the binding, and when they're done, the verdict is clear.
16:21This is the genuine, real deal, authentic, rare first edition of Tamerlane.
16:32This is massive.
16:34We all know that Poe goes on to become one of the great American authors, which makes a rare edition of his first ever published work an incredibly valuable find.
16:46So the fisherman decides to put his 150-year-old copy of Tamerlane up for auction, and that fisherman's little old $15 book sells for $198,000.
17:00Now that is a really good catch.
17:11Imagine you're cleaning out your father's estate with your brother, sorting through years of memories.
17:17Then hidden among it all, you find something that doesn't belong here.
17:22Something that should be hanging on a museum wall.
17:25In 2006, Dave and Don Trachty are sorting through some things in their late father's home.
17:34Their father, Donald Trachty Sr., was a well-known cartoonist, and they're just going through his estate to see what they want to keep and what they want to sell.
17:43They've been through these rooms hundreds of times, but as they're talking about their dad's life and reminiscing, something odd catches their eye.
17:52It's a bookcase that their father built himself, but it looks a little off.
17:58The brothers notice a gap in the wood-paneled wall behind it, and when they press into it, the wall slides open.
18:08Behind the false wall, they find paintings, and not just any paintings.
18:13These are by artists that were very prominent in publications like the Saturday Evening Post.
18:20You're talking about artists like Mead Shaffer, George Hughes, Gene Pelham.
18:24And while those paintings are interesting, there's one piece in particular that stops the brothers' cold.
18:30It's Breaking Home Ties by Norman Rockwell, one of America's most renowned artists from the middle of the 20th century.
18:40The brothers are confused. They're very familiar with the painting, and they know that it's supposed to be at the Norman Rockwell Museum.
18:47And that's because back in the 1970s, their dad donated to them, and it's been on display ever since.
18:51To solve the mystery, the brothers turn to experts, and what they uncover raises more questions than answers.
19:00After testing and brushstroke analysis, it's determined that the painting in their father's secret room is authentic.
19:10The brothers are stunned. They work with investigators to try to put the pieces together, and soon a picture starts to emerge.
19:16Back in the 1950s, their father, a cartoonist that was known for his comic strip Henry, lived in Arlington, Vermont.
19:25And his neighbor was none other than renowned Americana artist Norman Rockwell.
19:30The two men became friends, and at one point, Tracty bought Breaking Home Ties from Rockwell for $900.
19:37It then hung proudly in the family home for years, alongside other works the cartoonists had collected.
19:43But in 1973, Tracty and his wife go through a contentious divorce, and he's afraid of losing the painting in the settlement.
19:52So as a talented artist in his own right, he secretly makes a copy, a near perfect one.
19:59Even though Tracty wound up getting to keep the painting in the settlement after all, he was still paranoid that someone would try to take it away from him.
20:08So he donated the copy of the Norman Rockwell painting to the museum, all while secretly keeping the actual painting in his home so that no one would go looking for it.
20:20His copy was so good that even the staff at the Norman Rockwell Museum thought they had the original.
20:27That is, until the Tracty brothers discovered that hidden space up in Vermont.
20:30In late 2006, the Tracty family decides to sell the original painting, and it nets an amazing sum of $15.4 million.
20:43It's certainly an American story, just not the type that Rockwell painted.
20:47Next, another work of art uncovered in an even more unlikely place, church.
21:01In the fall of 2022, a carpenter named Paul Brown is walking through an old church in West Philadelphia.
21:07It's being renovated by new owners, and they're gutting the place, getting rid of many of the building's old fixtures.
21:15Brown's attention is immediately drawn to two large stained glass windows.
21:21They're covered in grime and encased in the wall, but even under all that dirt, there's something about them that speaks to him.
21:27The church is just planning on throwing these old windows away, but he hates the idea of them just ending up on some trash heap somewhere, so he offers to buy them.
21:39Back home, he wants to clean them up and restore them, but he's not quite sure how to handle delicate stained glass, so he calls up a local auction house for advice.
21:50They tell him he didn't just buy some pretty windows, he now owns custom pieces handcrafted by Tiffany & Company.
22:00Founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany, the company becomes an iconic name in American luxury.
22:08While Charles was known for his glitzy jewelry, his son Lewis Comfort Tiffany developed a particular knack for crafting stunning stained glass lamps.
22:16What's not as well known is that Tiffany also crafted church windows during America's Gilded Age.
22:26In 1901, as Philadelphia's St. Paul's Presbyterian Church was under construction, they turned to Tiffany to create two eight-foot rose-shaped windows.
22:37But over the ensuing decades, the special origins of these windows get completely forgotten.
22:44By the time the new owners take over, nobody recognizes these gorgeous treasures that are hanging in plain sight, at least until Paul Brown walks in.
22:56But the Lord works in mysterious ways.
22:59After the Tiffany attribution is confirmed, Brown sells the windows for over $250,000.
23:06And he ends up donating a portion of the proceeds back to the very church that almost threw the windows away.
23:12For one woman, a regular morning stroll with her dog turns into something wild when she picks up what she thinks is trash.
23:24In the summer of 2022, an accountant named Maria Carrillo takes her daily break to walk her dog. She steps out the back door of her Anaheim office and into the alley behind.
23:36Now normally this alley is sort of full of squatters and she also uses the opportunity while walking the dogs to straighten up and take care of any of the trash that they might have left behind.
23:48As she stops to clean up after her dog, she spots something on the ground. It's a crumpled up McDonald's bag, something that she's seen a number of times before and just thrown away.
24:00She picks it up to take it to the nearest trash can, but she realizes something's off. This bag is much heavier than it should be.
24:09Curious, she uncrumples the bag and looks inside. This is no leftover Big Mac. There, besides some ketchup packets and leftover french fries, is something that's gold.
24:19Maria pulls it out and she reads it and she can't believe her eyes. Etched into the side, it says,
24:26Games of the 32nd Olympiad Tokyo 2020. A real deal, authentic Olympic gold medal.
24:38Maria calls her husband and asks what he thinks they should do.
24:42And they have a friend who works for the Anaheim Police Department, so they decide they should call him.
24:47It turns out, this is the break Anaheim PD has been waiting for. Because four weeks earlier, an Olympic gold medal was reported stolen.
24:58But the story of how it got there and who earned it is even more surprising.
25:06In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the U.S. women's indoor volleyball team took home the gold for the first time in the program's history.
25:14It's an incredible achievement and Jordan Poulter, dubbed the best setter of the tournament, was a huge part of the team's success.
25:22When Jordan got home, everyone wanted to see and touch and hold an authentic Olympic medal.
25:27Can you blame him? So she started toting it around with her to show off and show her friends.
25:33I mean, honestly, who can fault her? This is a generational achievement. The first women's volleyball medal for the United States and you're part of that success.
25:46But one day, she left it in her car and forgot to lock it.
25:53And someone stole all her belongings from the center console, including the gold medal.
25:58A few weeks later, the perpetrator is found and arrested, but not with the medal.
26:03Police believe that he was attempting to sell the gold medal at a pawn shop down the street from Maria's office.
26:09But when he was turned away, he abandoned it in the alley.
26:13Thankfully, this story has a happy ending.
26:16For Jordan and her teammates, that medal is priceless.
26:20She's so grateful to have it back, she actually gives Maria and her husband a $1,000 reward.
26:27And very wisely, she says from then on, she's going to keep the medal at home.
26:342,000 miles away, another golden discovery is made at an equally odd place.
26:41This time, buried in a field.
26:43In early 2023, a Kentucky farmer is finishing up a hard day's work.
26:50As he walks back to his truck, he looks out across the dirt, as he's done countless times before.
26:57But this time, the setting sun throws up a glint of something on the ground.
27:02He walks over and he sees a small, round, yellowish shape in the dirt.
27:06He picks it up, wipes it off, and he realizes it's a gold half dollar.
27:14The farmer tosses the coin in his pocket and keeps walking.
27:19But that's when he sees another glint coming from the dirt.
27:22It's another gold coin.
27:23It's another gold coin.
27:25And then he keeps walking and he finds another one.
27:28And another one.
27:29And another one.
27:31There's a trail of shiny little dots in the dirt.
27:34This is the most insane thing ever.
27:37And look, I'm still digging them out.
27:39There's five, two, three, four, five, six.
27:42Six.
27:43Six more gold coins.
27:44After about 45 minutes, he's found more than 700 coins, all dated from between the 1840s and the 1860s.
27:53He reaches out to a coin dealer named Jeff Garrett.
27:56Garrett is astonished.
27:59Most of the coins are $1 gold pieces, known as Indian Princess Dollars.
28:04But mixed in are also 20 $10 Liberty Head Eagles and eight $20 Liberty Double Eagles.
28:11The Liberty Double Eagles are especially unique.
28:15Mended in 1863, fewer than 150,000 Double Eagles were ever created.
28:20And most of them were never circulated due to widespread hoarding.
28:24So today they're exceptionally rare and highly sought after by collectors.
28:29The discovery becomes known as the Great Kentucky Horde.
28:32But no one's sure how it got here.
28:35Some speculate that the coins might have been hidden by a landowner
28:39who didn't trust the security banks of the time could provide.
28:45Remember that in the early 1860s, the Civil War is raging.
28:49Kentucky declares itself a neutral state, but it's caught between Union and Confederate forces.
28:55Kentucky's banks and homes were frequent targets of Confederate raids.
29:00So perhaps the owner of the coins was just burying them in his field to keep them safe.
29:07Others think that it could have been raiders themselves who buried the treasure.
29:12It could have even been the infamous Confederate general, John Hunt Morgan,
29:16notorious for his violent raids in Kentucky and other states.
29:20Luckily, the coins now belong to the farmer who found them.
29:22And it turns out these gold dollars are worth more than a pretty penny.
29:28They have a face value of $1,200.
29:31But when he puts them up for auction, they net him over $3 million.
29:36Now, that's a remarkable find.
29:38When most people move into a new house, they hope they don't find the last owner's trash.
29:50But what one Long Island man finds is priceless.
29:57It's 1994 and a machinist named Bruce Campbell is cleaning out the basement of a cabin on Long Island that he's just purchased.
30:04It's a mess filled with the former owner's belongings.
30:09As he's cleaning out the basement, he comes across a box that's filled with what, to him, first looked like old home movies.
30:16But on closer inspection, these turn out to be amortated.
30:21This is a reel-to-reel audio technology used in the early 20th century.
30:26With no idea what's on them and with no way to play them,
30:29Campbell reaches out to an audio expert who might have the equipment that will get the job done.
30:35Bruce takes them over, and together, they have a listen.
30:39But the audio that comes out of the speakers is not what Campbell was expecting.
30:45Here we go again! Another plane to come over!
30:48The audio starts with whizzing airplanes, yelling, gunfire, and the occasional explosion.
30:53Cutting through it all is a steady voice, describing the horrific scenes of a beachfront invasion and battle.
31:04Pages are making a knock right over our file now.
31:07Yes sir, buddy!
31:09Bruce has stumbled upon an original recording of radio correspondent George Hicks's D-Day reporting from the coast of Normandy.
31:17On June 6, 1944, Hicks was aboard USS Ancon just off the coast of Normandy.
31:24He speaks into a primitive tape recorder called a record graph, reporting on the D-Day invasion as it happened.
31:31Something burning is falling down through the sky. Maybe a Hicks plane.
31:36Amid the chaos of war, Hicks delivers a gripping play-by-play in a calm, clear voice.
31:44There he goes.
31:47His report was just 13 minutes and 29 seconds long.
31:51But when the recording hit the American airwaves later that night,
31:57it conveyed the intensity of the fighting to the American home front.
32:02The press hailed it as the greatest recording of the war.
32:05It's been decades since anyone has heard these recordings.
32:08So how did the originals end up in the basement of a cabin in Long Island?
32:14Bruce does some digging through property records
32:18and discovers that the former owner was once an executive at a record graph company.
32:23That's the recording system that the reporter Hicks used on that fateful day.
32:27The executive was a bit of a collector.
32:30And it turns out he'd been using his cabin as storage for old recordings and relics from the record graph industry.
32:36When he passed away in 1992, the collection just remained in the basement waiting for the next owner to find.
32:43In 2019, Bruce donates the tapes to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation,
32:48ensuring that the sounds and voices from one of the war's most important battles
32:53will continue to be heard and never forgotten.
32:56George Hicks speaking. I now return you to the United States.
32:58I guess one man's trash is another man's treasure, which is literally the case in our next story.
33:10In 1993, Todd Franklin and a couple of his buddies are walking through this country western music venue in Missouri.
33:16The venue is closing down, it's going out of business, so everything inside is up for sale.
33:24Among the clutter, Todd spots a trash can that he just can't take his eyes off.
33:30It's overflowing with garbage, but the bin itself looks a lot like the Death Star.
33:35Every Star Wars fan knows what the Death Star is, the famous moon-sized planet-killing weapon that Luke Skywalker and the other rebels blow up at the end of Star Wars.
33:48Todd is quite the sci-fi buff, and while he's seen a lot of Star Wars merchandise over the years,
33:54he's never seen a Death Star trash can before, so he approaches the owner and buys it.
33:58When he gets it home, he takes a closer look.
34:02This thing is incredibly detailed, and it doesn't really seem like a trash can at all.
34:08While it does have a small opening, the inside isn't completely empty.
34:14There is all these metal cross beams to keep it perfectly spherical.
34:20So not only does this make it a pretty ineffective trash can, but it gets Todd thinking,
34:23could this be a prop from the actual Star Wars movie?
34:29Todd reaches out to the one place that can tell him for sure, Lucasfilm, the producers of Star Wars.
34:37When he finally gets someone on the phone, they tell him that the props were stored off-site in a warehouse.
34:42But after production finished, they didn't want to continue paying storage fees, and so they had everything thrown out.
34:48Lucasfilm tells him he must be in possession of some sort of replica.
34:51They don't think much of it, so they're like, bye, Todd.
34:56Regardless, Todd hangs on to the strange object as a conversation piece.
35:02A few years later, Todd attends a lecture by Mark Thorpe, a model maker from Industrial Light & Magic.
35:10This is the company George Lucas used to make the props and special effects for the Star Wars films.
35:16After the lecture is over, Todd approaches Mark and tells him about this Death Star model that he has in his possession.
35:24Now, Mark has first-hand knowledge of how the Death Star was built, and the details surrounding this replica sound very similar.
35:33Todd tells Mark that Lucasfilm insisted that all the props were destroyed at the end of production.
35:38But Mark's not so sure about that, and he thinks the Death Star trash can might be the real deal.
35:46Mark recalls that there were these rumors that there was an employee at the warehouse who allegedly took the Death Star model home.
35:55Instead of destroying it, he kept it for nearly a decade.
35:58Then, in the late 1980s, he moved to Missouri and stored the prop in his mother's antique shop.
36:06There it stayed for years until the owner of the music venue bought it.
36:11Fueled with new information, Todd decides to give Lucasfilm one more call.
36:17This time, they are shocked.
36:20Now, even they believe that Todd has the actual Death Star model from the original movie.
36:26So Todd decides that now would be the time to sell his prized discovery.
36:32Generously, he offers Lucasfilm the first shot at purchasing it from him.
36:36They offer him a tour of the Lucas Ranch and an autographed picture of George Lucas.
36:43It's a cool offer, to be sure, especially if you're a Star Wars fan,
36:46but Todd is convinced that somebody is going to pay him a whole lot of cash for this model.
36:51So, he declines.
36:52So, eventually, in 1999, he sells the prop to mega-fan, super-collector, Gus Lopez.
37:02While the details of the sale are never released, some estimate that the value of the Death Star model could be as high as a million dollars.
37:09But Gus doesn't keep it for himself.
37:13He loans it to the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, so now it can be enjoyed by aspiring Jedi, Wookiees, and Stormtroopers for years.
37:23We've all walked into a thrift store, not expecting to find much more than a small bargain, but one find turns out to be a relic tied to the birth of a nation.
37:38In 2022, workers at a Goodwill in Washington, D.C. do what they do day after day.
37:47They sort through incoming donations.
37:52As the workers dig through a bag of donated clothes, they find a dusty, old, torn-up rag with red trim.
38:00They're about to toss it when someone notices a piece of paper attached to it.
38:05They glance at it and see a name.
38:09George Washington.
38:11This gets their attention, and they look closer and see it is a handwritten note indicating that this piece of fabric is a fragment of a tent used by the Revolutionary War hero and first president of the United States, George Washington.
38:28It seems hard to believe, but the workers save the cloth from the trash heap.
38:36They decide to put it up for sale on a Goodwill auction site where people can bid on items found in Goodwill stores across the United States.
38:45And that's where it catches the eye of an American history buff named Richard Moore.
38:49He decides to take the gamble, and he buys it for $1,700, but he's so uneasy about it that he hides the purchase from his wife.
39:00The prospect of owning a piece of a tent used by George Washington is very compelling, but Moore is unsure since a handwritten note is not exactly rock-solid documentation that this is real.
39:13Anxious to figure out if the fabric is the real deal, Moore contacts Philadelphia's Museum of the American Revolution.
39:23They tell Moore that Washington used two main tents during the war.
39:27There was a large tent that he used as both his office and sleeping quarters, and that's on display at the museum.
39:33And then there was a smaller dining tent, which is currently stored at the Smithsonian in Washington.
39:38Moore sends this piece of cloth to the museum in Philadelphia for analysis.
39:45When it's compared to the tent that's on display there, it turns out it's not a match.
39:51Holding on to hope, he sends the cloth to the Smithsonian.
39:55And when they compare it to Washington's smaller tent, it turns out to be a perfect match.
40:00But now that it's authenticated, everyone still wants to know how a piece of George Washington's dining tent ends up in a goodwill store.
40:12After Washington's death, the tent was passed down to his family, and they would often display it publicly.
40:17In 1907, the tent was put on display in Norfolk, Virginia, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.
40:27It was there that someone named John Burns allegedly cut a six-inch piece of fabric from the tent and attaches a note explaining its origin.
40:38Historians believe that the piece of cloth that Burns cut from the tent is the same as the one that Richard Moore purchased from Goodwill.
40:48But to this day, nobody knows how it got from Burns to Goodwill.
40:53The value of the tent piece has been estimated to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
40:58But for Moore, it's a piece of family history.
41:00Moore could trace his family tree back to a Revolutionary War soldier who served under Washington at Valley Forge.
41:11This means that the fragment of cloth was part of a tent that his ancestor may have seen or even dined in during the war that won America's freedom.
41:20A mysterious stash of buried Civil War coins, a relic that belonged to our country's first president, and a hidden artistic masterpiece worth a fortune.
41:34These incredible finds really are surprising national treasures.
41:39I'm Danny Trejo.
41:40I'm Danny Trejo.
41:41Thanks for watching Mysteries on Earth.
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