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00:08I'm Mike Wolf and I've spent my life traveling the world chasing forgotten
00:13objects and the histories behind them. People everywhere are turning up
00:19artifacts every day often by chance and if you're lucky some of these finds can
00:26be worth serious money. Tonight on History's Greatest Picks. Not all treasures are
00:36buried away in some far-off place. Some might be hiding in your very own
00:42backyard. We're talking epic movie history forgotten in a woodshed. Jack
00:48Nicholson's character wanders maniacally around the halls of this hotel holding
00:53this axe. Rock and roll riches rescued from a dumpster. I mean these are lead
00:58zeppelins drum heads. How cool is that? The estate sale find worth nearly half a
01:05billion dollars. This thing is as historically significant as the Mona
01:11Lisa itself. So the real question what's hiding in your backyard? So sit back and
01:18let me tell you the stories behind some of history's greatest picks.
01:30Back in the day two kids in LA were playing in their backyard and dug up a 1974
01:36Ferrari Dino GTS. You heard me right. And a couple in Sierra Nevada unearthed a huge
01:43amount of gold coins worth an estimated 10 million bucks. And then there's the guy
01:49who had something hiding in his woodshed for the better part of 40 years.
02:00Here's the story. This guy has this land he wants to clear. For this he's gonna have to chop some
02:04trees down.
02:05He's gonna need an axe. It just so happens that where he works is having an auction like a secondhand
02:10sale.
02:11And one of the lots is an axe just like the kind that he needs.
02:17So he puts in a bit of five pounds for the axe which is about seven dollars.
02:22And guess what? He wins it.
02:24And then like so many other homeowners he eventually never gets to this project where he was gonna cut down
02:31all this wood on his property.
02:33He puts the axe in his garden shed and forgets all about it. It would stay in that shed with
02:38the blade unused for decades.
02:42It's in exactly the same condition as it was when it was used by its previous owner.
02:50Now the thing you've got to know about this axe is the guy who used it first.
02:59It's been a 12-month long brutal schedule of filming that they've been through on Stanley Kubrick's latest effort which
03:06is a psychological thriller, a horror film.
03:09And the lead role is played by Jack Nicholson.
03:12His character is named Jack Torrance and the film of course is The Shining.
03:18In this movie, Jack Nicholson's character becomes this homicidal maniac and he wanders maniacally around the halls of this hotel
03:26looking for his family, looking to murder them, holding this axe.
03:32The most famous scene in the whole movie of The Shining is when Jack Nicholson takes the axe and smashes
03:38it through the door, sticks his head through the door and says, here's Johnny.
03:45And this makes the axe almost as much of a star as Jack Nicholson himself.
03:52For the wide shots, they can use a prop axe made of foam painted to look like the real thing.
03:58But for close-ups, Kubrick needs a real axe.
04:00He can't, you know, have a homicidal maniac using a prop.
04:04It's got to be the real deal.
04:06The props department custom makes the hero axe.
04:09So they make a genuine fire axe that's 35 and a half inches long.
04:14The axe head is 11 and a half inches wide.
04:17And the blade is ground to make it shine on camera.
04:21And it's also very, very sharp.
04:25In the famous scene where Nicholson chops through the bathroom door with the axe, they use a fake prop door
04:34at first.
04:35In a previous life, Nicholson had been a volunteer firefighter in the California Air National Guard.
04:41So even though he wasn't a murderous psychopath, he's still pretty darn good with an axe.
04:46So this prop door won't hold up.
04:48So a real wooden door is substituted and Nicholson swings the axe.
04:55And the axe got a little worn.
04:57There was a little wear and tear on it.
05:00At the conclusion of shooting, the film production does what film productions do.
05:05They clear out all the props and everything has to be disposed of and sold.
05:10The props have served their purpose.
05:12The movie's over and they would just end up in the trash unless someone wants to take them.
05:16All the props are auctioned off.
05:19And this is where this guy gets this axe for $7.
05:23The guy never used the axe to chop anything.
05:27And that means it remains in the exact same condition of the last time that it was used by Jack
05:33Nicholson when he chops through the door during The Shining.
05:38As movie member Philly goes, it's really valuable.
05:43In 2019, one of the fake foam axes is put up for auction.
05:48By now, The Shining has achieved classic cult horror status and it sells for $57,000.
05:54When the real hero axe hits the auction block later that very same week, it sells for just over $200
06:01,000.
06:02Which isn't bad for an initial investment of just $7.
06:12You never know what might be hiding in your garbage.
06:16Like the guy who found the equivalent of a small fortune.
06:26Al Aronowitz has a house guest.
06:30His house guest is up doing something throughout the night.
06:34When Al gets up in the morning, he goes to see what he's been up to.
06:39Next to the typewriter, the ashtray is overflowing and there's a completely filled waste paper basket next to it.
06:48And this, by the way, is one of the big advantages of a typewriter over a computer.
06:52Because with a typewriter, you've got artifacts.
06:54He smooths out some of the sheets of paper and he sees a song or a poem starting to take
07:01shape.
07:03So he goes, I'm going to keep a couple of these as a souvenir.
07:07It would prove to be a very profitable thing to do.
07:10Because the house guest was a guy by the name of Bob Dylan.
07:20In spring of 1964, Bob Dylan had just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, Suze Rotolo.
07:27She's the one famously pictured on the album cover of the freewheeling Bob Dylan.
07:34After the split, Bob Dylan spent some time staying with his friend Al.
07:39Now, Al is a music journalist and he knows better than anyone what a rare talent Bob Dylan has.
07:46And maybe it's his intuition as a journalist.
07:49But you have to think that when somebody's going through something like that and they're an artist,
07:53maybe some greatness is being created in those moments.
07:58Usually his songwriting process is a rush of inspiration and it's done.
08:03But this one he's laboring over and Aronowitz notices in these sheets,
08:10one, two, three different versions of the same song.
08:14And the song is Mr. Tambourine Man.
08:22You cannot overstate the importance of this song.
08:25Mr. Tambourine Man, when covered by the birds, single-handedly ignites the folk rock movement.
08:32It shoots to number one.
08:34The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a resurgence of folk music.
08:40Bob Dylan was at the spearhead of this movement.
08:43But all of a sudden, when it moves to Southern California and it gets this injection of rock music,
08:49it hits the mainstream.
08:50Now it's played on radio.
08:53It's Bob Dylan's only number one hit and he did not record it.
08:57And there it is, found in a waste paper basket.
09:01Al's a music journalist.
09:03I mean, he's part of that 1960s music scene.
09:06He was the original manager of the Velvet Underground.
09:09He introduced Dylan to the Beatles.
09:12According to friends and family, Al always used to tell the story of how he rescued the original lyrics
09:17to Mr. Tambourine Man out of the trash.
09:20It's part of the family lore.
09:27When Al dies in 2005, his son Miles cannot find Mr. Tambourine Man.
09:34He knows that his father filed them.
09:36Were they lost?
09:37Was this story made up?
09:39Were they stolen?
09:40Al leaves an archive that is just vast.
09:44It's 250 banker's boxes full of documents.
09:49It takes his son Miles literally years to sort through all of the archives, paper by paper by paper.
09:56But eventually, he finds them.
10:00The lyrics rescued from Al's archives are sold at auction in 2025 and are snapped up for $508,000.
10:08That's a profit of half a million dollars for scraps of paper originally tossed into the garbage.
10:20We all know how the story goes.
10:23A woman walks into a thrift store and buys a painting for $30 to cover a hole in her wall.
10:28And then it turns out to be the lost masterpiece that sells for over a million bucks at an auction.
10:33It's a true story, just like the next one.
10:36Except this time, we're not talking about a painting worth a mere million bucks.
10:40We're talking hundreds of millions.
10:48It's 1958, and a couple are on a trip to London.
10:53Warren and Minnie Kuntz from New Orleans are small-time art collectors.
10:59Just before they head back to the States, they do what any good collector does.
11:02They just poke their head into an auction house just to see what's happening.
11:07There's a collection of 136 paintings up for sale.
11:11One of the lots is called Salvatore Mundi.
11:17It's a Renaissance-era painting attributed to Giovanni Peltroffio.
11:23Who was a student of Leonardo da Vinci.
11:27It shows Christ holding an orb in one hand and giving a blessing with the other.
11:31The painting is showing its age.
11:32Its varnish is cracked.
11:34I mean, it's 500 years old.
11:35And not only that, at some point, the face was retouched or restored.
11:41But it was done so badly that one critic says it looks like a drug-crazed hippie.
11:47But this doesn't dissuade Warren and Minnie.
11:50They have an eye for old art, so they decide to place a bid.
11:54No one else puts in a bid, so they snatch up the Beltroffio painting for 45 pounds, the equivalent of
12:01$120 back then.
12:06They're not big art dealers.
12:08Nobody knows about them in the art world, so this doesn't make a huge splash.
12:11And so it goes back to Louisiana with Warren and Minnie.
12:16Warren and Minnie pass the painting on to a nephew who hangs it in a stairwell in his house in
12:23Baton Rouge.
12:24And it sits there collecting dust for years.
12:28When the nephew passes, the painting by Beltroffio hits the auction block in 2005 for a second time.
12:36This time, it sells for just over $1,000 to a couple of art dealers from New York.
12:42The art dealers know that there are at least 30 different versions of Salvatore Mundi attributed to Leonardo's workshop,
12:50including this one by Beltroffio.
12:53This is how it worked in the Renaissance.
12:55The masters, the Michelangelos and the Leonardo's at the time, did not work in isolation.
13:01They had teams of young artists who came as apprentices and would often finish and assist the master with their
13:10own works.
13:11It's all about the brushstrokes.
13:14You can't emulate the brushstrokes.
13:18It's like a signature.
13:20It's like a fingerprint.
13:21Once you identify the brushstrokes of the master, it's unmistakable that this is not of a student.
13:31The dealers want to find out a little bit more about this work.
13:36So they take it to Diane Modestini, an expert in Renaissance art.
13:41Her job is to clean it, stabilize it, and see what's underneath all those years of grime and cracked varnish
13:48and that horribly done touch-up.
13:50The restoration process is slow and painstaking.
13:55It takes months or even years.
13:57A moment comes when Diane tries to retouch some damage on the figure's upper lip, but she can never quite
14:04get it right.
14:04So, as a guide, she's going to take inspiration from the master himself.
14:09She puts it side by side with a copy of the Mona Lisa.
14:15It's then, for the first time, that she sees the remarkable resemblance.
14:22As she looks at the lip of her restoration of Salvatore Mundi and looks at the lip of Mona Lisa,
14:28these are a one-to-one match.
14:31She suddenly believes that what she's looking at isn't a copy of a Leonardo.
14:36It is an original Leonardo.
14:40This thing is as historically significant as the Mona Lisa itself.
14:46What follows rings like a thunderclap through the art world.
14:54There are only so many Leonardo da Vinci paintings in existence.
15:00For another one to come on the scene is earth-shattering.
15:14What follows is years of analysis, radiography, x-rays to ensure that its provenance of the hand of Leonardo himself
15:27is verified.
15:28And there are claims and counterclaims.
15:32Some say it's not a Leonardo.
15:34Others say it's partly by Leonardo.
15:37And others still say it's a Leonardo masterpiece.
15:44Even though no one agrees, it still heads to auction.
15:52When it reappears back at auction in 2017, a bidding war breaks out.
15:57$190 million.
15:58Give me $200.
15:59$200 million is big.
16:01These guys are throwing down.
16:03$264 million.
16:04$300 million.
16:07$370 million.
16:08We're still not done.
16:09And when the gavel drops, it sells for, get this, $450,300,000.
16:24It's always important to pay attention to your surroundings because you never know what you might be stepping over.
16:31Like the two guys that were on a hike in the mountains when they spotted a metal box poking out
16:36of the ground.
16:36Inside were nearly 600 gold coins worth $340,000.
16:43Or the guy in the next story who discovered a silver mine and some unexpected treasure within.
16:53The desert of Nevada contains hundreds of abandoned silver mines.
16:58Time capsules locked up from the day hundreds of years ago when the very last prospector picked up his shovel
17:05and left.
17:07Michael Allen Harris is a bit of a mine archaeologist.
17:10And over the years, he has visited dozens of these abandoned mine sites.
17:14He's found newspapers dating to the 1800s.
17:17He's found handwritten letters, even hand-drawn crude pornography.
17:22He's even found old whiskey bottles from that time period, which collectors will pay upwards of $100 for.
17:29But as he claws through the dirt in the back of one mine, he finds this heavy fabric just caked
17:36in dirt and dried in mud.
17:38He keeps digging until he finally reveals a pair of worn and torn blue denim pants.
17:46They're a little frayed, the hems are a little busted, but they're mostly intact.
17:52On the back right hip is a label.
17:55Although faded over time, it can still be read.
17:58Levi Strauss and Company, copper riveted clothing.
18:03Patent, May 20th, 1873.
18:10The genes are a creation of two men.
18:13Levi Strauss, who gave them their name.
18:15And Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, who really created the structure and engineering of them.
18:21Since the start of the silver boom in the 1860s, thousands have flocked to Nevada in hopes of making it
18:28rich.
18:29And so they rush into it, but their big problem is that they have to be equipped for the rough
18:34experience of mining.
18:36And the rough experience of mining takes its toll on clothing.
18:40And so Jacob's repair business has never been busier because now there's suddenly more demand than ever as miners are
18:46flocking to places like Nevada in the search for silver.
18:49He's running a thriving business, repairing clothing as it gets worn through the demanding physical conditions of mining.
19:00So he decides to come up with something tougher.
19:04A strong pair of work pants reinforced with copper rivets, the same technology used in saddle making that'll give these
19:12miners a long lasting piece of work clothing.
19:15And he finds that it's a winning combination and that it works well.
19:20It really makes pants that hold up to the rigors of mining very effectively.
19:27They're an immediate success and orders explode.
19:32Davis is so paranoid that someone will steal his idea that he contacts his fabric supplier in San Francisco, Levi
19:39Strauss,
19:40and asks him to file a patent for copper riveted work pants.
19:46The vintage Levi's found by Michael Harris are a perfect time capsule of these old mining days down to the
19:54copper rivets and even the wax stains from the candles that miners would use to light their way.
20:02But the question now is, just how old are they?
20:07They have suspender buttons, but no belt loops, which weren't introduced until 1922.
20:15And there's only one back pocket.
20:18The second pocket was introduced in 1902.
20:21So they're older than that.
20:24And there's one more disturbing clue as to how old these jeans are.
20:29He finds inside the left front pocket that there's a message printed and it says best value, best finish, best
20:37materials.
20:38And at the bottom, there's a message that's a little disturbing by today's standards.
20:44It says made by white labor.
20:48Levi's added this line in 1882 after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
20:56At a time when many people felt that there were too many Chinese laborers who were working for mining operations
21:03and on the railroad.
21:05It was a way of identifying that Levi's was not using Asian labor to produce its mining ware.
21:12But the company's policy eventually shifts and they abandoned using that message in the 1890s.
21:18So the date of these jeans can be narrowed down to a couple of years in the early 1890s.
21:26In other words, they're among the oldest Levi's known to exist.
21:33In 2022, Harris decides it's time to turn history into cash.
21:38And he sends them to auction where they fetch a staggering $88,000.
21:43And apparently, they're still wearable.
21:51Hidden treasures can be found absolutely anywhere.
21:54And maybe even in your backyard.
22:00For the last 15 years, at this small market town in England, there have been these two figures standing at
22:08the bottom of this couple's garden.
22:10They're instantly recognizable, though.
22:12They're basically mini models of the Sphinx.
22:15The famous Sphinx from Egypt.
22:18Now, the couple had originally bought these at a country house sale for 300 pounds, which is the equivalent of
22:23around 500 U.S. dollars today.
22:26So you look at these, and, yeah, they're not terribly remarkable.
22:32Some of them may be, like, two feet high, maybe, like, three feet in length.
22:37Eh, you're not even that big.
22:39They show their age.
22:40One of them, the head became detached, and it's been stuck back together with cement.
22:47So there comes a point when the couple are downsizing.
22:49And they're going to take these two Sphinxes, along with a lot of other things from their home,
22:54and they're just going to take them to the local auction house and try to raise some money.
22:58In the auction catalog, they've listed this as a pair of 19th century carved stone garden models of Egyptian Sphinx.
23:07They have an estimated value of somewhere between 300 and 500 pounds, and the opening bid is 200 pounds.
23:14And this is where it gets interesting, because this auction is online, and people in the know have been sniffing
23:23around the auction catalog,
23:24and they've smelled a bargain.
23:27Slowly, the price begins to creep up, and then it creeps up again, and it creeps up again, and again,
23:34and again.
23:35And a bidding war breaks out.
23:39The auctioneer and the couple have had no idea what's been sitting at the bottom of their garden for the
23:45last 15 years.
23:46But some of the bidders clearly do.
23:50Among the bidders are international gallery owners, antiquity dealers, people who know their stuff.
23:58The clues have been staring them in the face all along.
24:01For one thing, they're made of a limestone.
24:03That is consistent with ancient Egyptian artifacts.
24:07But then the other thing is that all that weathering might look like it's from decades of English weather,
24:13but it's actually from centuries of desert weather.
24:18The clincher is the size of the head relative to the rest of the body.
24:22When you look at it from the side or head on, it looks weirdly big, like the head is swollen.
24:27But that's exactly how the ancient Egyptians would build these things,
24:31because they usually have them sitting in a way that people would look up at them.
24:34And when you look up from an angle, the head looks just right.
24:39So get this.
24:40The bidding, which begins at $300, reaches $200,000.
24:45And after 15 minutes of this back and forth,
24:48the Sphinxes are sold to an anonymous museum for their final selling price of $300,000.
25:02We all know the old saying,
25:04one person's trash is usually another person's trash.
25:07But against all odds, this next guy proves that wrong.
25:11You just got to be in the right place at the right time.
25:20In the east end of London,
25:22there's a transport and logistics company called Edwin Shirley Trucking, or EST.
25:27They're known for transporting equipment and stages and things.
25:31Their client list is sort of like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
25:35Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Hoot, Deep Purple.
25:40They don't just supply the trucks for the tours.
25:43They provide storage space for the equipment that goes on the trucks.
25:47And after years and years of this business, things coming in and out,
25:51there comes a point where they've got 50,000 square foot of storage,
25:54but it's all full up.
25:56To them, at this point, it's just trash.
26:03A team of workers is now cleaning out all these abandoned shipping units and storage containers.
26:08And their instructions are,
26:10if no one's claimed it, just get it out of there and burn it.
26:14So that's what they do.
26:16Classic bits of theatrical rock shows like Alice Cooper's guillotine are being broken down and thrown on a bonfire.
26:24They eventually get to the road cases associated with Led Zeppelin.
26:29And when they pull them out, they find that some of the cases contain drum heads.
26:34The skins that go over the drum, they're still left over from Led Zeppelin's last tour.
26:39I mean, these are Led Zeppelin's drum heads.
26:43How cool is that?
26:45So one of the guys on these crews, he plays drums himself.
26:49He's like, hey, do you mind if I just take these?
26:52And they're like, sure.
26:54This isn't just a cool discovery.
26:56It will prove to be a valuable one.
26:59What makes this one so special?
27:04Let's rewind to 1971 and the release of One A Rock's greatest albums ever.
27:11Led Zeppelin's third studio album receives mixed reviews from the critics.
27:15So going into the fourth album, Led Zeppelin decides they're going to have a little bit of fun with the
27:20critics.
27:20So this album, when it comes out, it doesn't have a title.
27:25It doesn't list the band members' names or the band's name.
27:29It doesn't even have a catalog number.
27:31The only identifying marks on this entire album cover are just these four symbols.
27:37And each one of them has been chosen by a different member of the band.
27:42The band was built on mysticism and the occult.
27:47Led Zeppelin was this mythical, magical rock and roll band.
27:52The band's drummer, John Henry Bonham, decides to use symbols called the Borromean Rings.
27:58And it's an ancient symbol that dates back thousands of years.
28:01But since 1971, it's only been associated with one thing.
28:04And that is one of the greatest drummers in rock and roll history.
28:11John Bonham was the driving force for Led Zeppelin.
28:15And this album is the most successful Zeppelin album ever.
28:19This album will include songs that will become classics, like Black Dog, Stairway to Heaven.
28:24Stairway to Heaven will become everyone's final prom song for the next, I think, 30 years.
28:29From 1971 to 1975, they are playing to sellout crowds in stadiums around the world,
28:35including the now legendary gigs at Earl's Court in London.
28:39It's a whole unique setup.
28:41You have to build stages, all custom-made.
28:44Each tour is different than the one before.
28:46And these guys do it better than anyone.
28:48They work with the biggest acts in the world.
28:51Bonham plays with a translucent orange drum kit that is centered around a 26-inch bass drum
28:57that has on the front skin a Borromean ring symbol.
29:02This tour is the only time in his career that he uses the drum head with the rings on it.
29:09When John Bonham dies in 1980 at the age of 32, the rest of the group decides to disband.
29:16And seven years later, their old equipment is thrown out, except for Bonham's drum heads.
29:26So this young guy, he's got these drum heads.
29:28He's taken them home, but eventually he stops playing the drums, and he's got these things packed away.
29:35So it's only after 37 years that he really opens up this case and decides to look at these drum
29:41heads.
29:43And he picks one up, and he sees the unmistakable symbol of John Bonham.
29:53The drum head has dents on it that match photos from their iconic tour.
29:59They're even visible in their film performance.
30:02The song remains the same.
30:05In 2024, he decides to sell with a reserve price of 3,000 pounds.
30:11They end up selling for 10 times that much, the equivalent to $40,000.
30:16And once their true value is recognized, there is nowhere to go but up.
30:21One year later, the drum head is flipped.
30:23One of the most iconic rock artifacts that has ever crossed the auction block.
30:29We're looking for $75,000.
30:32And this time goes for a whopping $87,500.
30:45If you're planning a renovation, you've got to be prepared to find something unexpected, something old, and maybe, hopefully, something
30:56of value.
31:02The Redland Hotel is up for renovation.
31:05The builders are in and demolishing every room to update it.
31:11All the fixtures and furniture are being removed and tossed in the parking lot.
31:18They get to the honeymoon suite, and there's this old four-poster bed, and it's junk.
31:23It's in the way, so they unceremoniously rip it apart, throw it in the big junk pile out front with
31:29everything else.
31:30A local man is walking by, and this catches his eye.
31:34The bed looks special.
31:37But he's not just any passerby.
31:39He's an auctioneer.
31:41So he rescues it from the trash pile, and he puts it up for auction,
31:45and he builds it as a profusely carved Victorian four-poster bed with armorial shields.
31:56Ian Coulson is a collector.
31:58He sees this auction online for this bed that looks amazing.
32:01He wins it without even seeing it in person.
32:04And as it turns out, he wins it for 2,200 pounds, about $3,000.
32:09When it arrives, he sees it's in even worse shape than it looked in the online pictures.
32:14The thing is crusty and covered in rot, but he immediately realizes that it's older than anyone imagined.
32:20The deep oxidization of the bedposts would have taken centuries to develop,
32:25and there are saw marks on the wood that show that this has been cut with manual tools,
32:31not the kinds of mechanized tools that existed in the 19th century.
32:35This is even older than that.
32:39So he brings in historians and scientists to analyze this bed further.
32:45So they do a DNA analysis of the timber, and they can show that it's European oak,
32:50and not just any European oak.
32:52It's a subspecies that is typical of the finest, slow-grown oak used by master craftsmen in the Middle Ages.
33:01They discover traces of ultramarine on the bed.
33:05It's an ultra-blue pigment that was used hundreds of years ago.
33:09And back in the day, ultramarine was considered more precious than gold.
33:14This bed's not Victorian.
33:16It's medieval.
33:17So now, things get very interesting.
33:23It's got three lions and three fleur-de-lis.
33:27This is the royal coat of arms of the kings of England.
33:32On the one hand, somebody could have faked it.
33:36On the other hand, what if it truly is the royal coat of arms?
33:40There are also these other ornate carvings.
33:43You've got Adam and Eve.
33:44You've got a dragon.
33:45You've got a lion.
33:47You've got acorns.
33:48Those are a symbol of fertility.
33:50And critically, the Lancastrian rose.
33:57In the 15th century, during the War of the Roses, these roses are symbols of the competing claims for the
34:04English throne.
34:05The Lancastrians are represented by the red rose, the Yorkists by the white.
34:11In 1486, the two houses are united under Henry VII, the Lancastrian king, who weds Elizabeth of York.
34:21And they adopt the Tudor rose symbol of the two roses blended together.
34:29As Ian digs through the archives, he finds records of the bed in the medieval palace of Westminster.
34:38That same exact bed was in the palace on January 18, 1486.
34:45Now, that is the exact same date as Henry VII's marriage to Elizabeth of York.
34:52This is the royal bed.
34:55Which means honeymooners at Redland Hotel, for $150, were sleeping in the same bed where future kings of England were
35:06conceived, including Henry VIII.
35:13This bed was built to be taken apart so that it could follow the king and queen as they traveled
35:18around their kingdom.
35:19They wouldn't have to stay in different beds.
35:21No, they could stay in their nice, comfy bed.
35:23It was the original flat-packed furniture.
35:25Finally, the bed ended up in the northwest of England, and centuries later served as the centerpiece of a honeymoon
35:33suite, only to be tossed aside in a parking lot.
35:42Ian's restoration of the bed to its original glory takes 13 years, but it is worth it.
35:48Given its history, its provenance, and its beauty, the bed has now been valued upwards of $30 million.
36:01You can find George Washington's signature on his personal copy of the U.S. Constitution, which sold for nearly $10
36:08million.
36:08And you can find Babe Ruth's signature on a baseball, which sold for nearly $400,000.
36:15But what about a set of signatures found at a demolition site?
36:20What value could they have?
36:27The old jail in Birmingham, Alabama, is being demolished.
36:33Inside the administration office, a worker is being told to go through all of the paperwork and just get rid
36:38of it.
36:39It's all destined for the landfill.
36:42Amidst all this pile of trash, he comes across an old hinged notebook and takes a look inside.
36:50It measures about 7 by 11 1⁄2 inches.
36:53The pages are manila and ruled in blue with handwritten entries.
36:58Each line records a letter or a package of something that was received at the jail.
37:03It's basically a logbook.
37:06The demolition worker casually flips through this logbook, and it covers a time period that includes the month of April
37:141963.
37:16And there's one signature that just jumps off the page.
37:21So he's doing his job.
37:22He's told to throw all this stuff out, and he does.
37:25But he pulls out two of these pages from the logbook as a keepsake.
37:29Everything else goes in the junk pile.
37:34The thing you've got to know about Birmingham jail is that 25 years earlier, its most famous inmate had been
37:41Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
37:48Birmingham, Alabama, has become a flashpoint for the civil rights movement.
37:54A court injunction has banned protests, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has led a peaceful march through Birmingham protesting
38:01segregation.
38:02This should cause us to go out more determined than ever before, to achieve our rights.
38:12Now, he did this knowing exactly what would happen.
38:16He would be arrested.
38:24He spends the next eight days in jail with his only connection to the outside world being what he receives
38:30through the mail.
38:31And there's a real flurry of activity while MLK is incarcerated.
38:36On April 17th, he receives this special delivery.
38:40Two days later, he receives a Western Union telegram and a regular letter, and he signs for both.
38:45Over the course of eight days, he's signed the logbook a total of 12 times.
38:52One of those packages contains a newspaper clipping and an open letter from eight white pastors who are writing King
39:00in protest of his actions.
39:03Essentially telling him to calm down.
39:05They were accusing him of being an outside agitator.
39:09They were basically telling him to stop it, tone it down, leave it alone.
39:15King decides to write an open letter in reply, but he has nothing to write on.
39:20So he starts to scribble on the margins of a newspaper that's been smuggled into him by a sympathetic guard.
39:26So all these bits and pieces which are smuggled out get compiled into what is known now as Letter from
39:33a Birmingham Jail, written by Martin Luther King Jr.
39:36In this letter, he essentially lays out his views on the purpose of peaceful civil disobedience.
39:46It is one of the fundamental documents of the American civil rights movement, never mind American history.
39:52It includes some of his most famous quotes, like, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
39:59Or the quote that says, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
40:07So King is released after eight days, and the letter gains wide circulation and a lot of traction.
40:14But no copy of the manuscript exists.
40:19So there's no wonder why one of the workers, when he saw this logbook, decided to hang on to these
40:25pages for a keepsake.
40:27When he gets home, he gives the pages to the family patriarch, who's a bit of a history buff, but
40:32they're kept secret.
40:33And for decades, the rest of the world has no idea that these pages even exist.
40:40The only relic of King's time in the Birmingham Jail are the bars from his cell, which are preserved in
40:46a museum.
40:48And these two pages, torn from the logbook.
40:50When they're revealed to the world in 2021, they sell at auction for a staggering $130,000 to an anonymous
41:00buyer.
41:01So there's no wonder why one of the workers, when he saw this logbook, decided to hang on to these
41:08pages for a keepsake.
41:09This was invaluable.
41:12Good call.
41:13All of which goes to show, if it can happen on a demolition site, or in an abandoned silver mine,
41:19or even in a woodshed, there's treasure to be found in anyone's backyard.
41:24Maybe even yours.
41:26All of which goes to show, if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on
41:30a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition
41:30site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or
41:32if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it
41:34can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen
41:34on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a
41:34demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site,
41:34or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if
41:34it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can happen on a demolition site, or if it can
41:34happen on
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