In a world that revolves around money, and more specifically about having to work pretty hard in order to have enough of it to live, it can a source of extreme envy when some undeserving douche just inherits or falls into a fortune. But you know what’s actually kind of endearing and makes me happy? Normal, everyday folks who just accidently fall into a bunch of money.
It’s basically the Australian dream, you know? The underdog, almost comically unaware of just how much their normal day and innocent casual purchase is about to change their lives. I am so here for it.
Struck Gold
This is first because it’s honestly my favourite. Remember The Nugget? I absolutely LOVE that movie/those goofy Aussie battler movies in general. What I love even more is that this actually happens IRL and has twice very recently in our own fair country.
First, a man in Victoria and his trusty metal detector came across a massive 4-kilo gold nugget worth $250,000. And get this, that was only a few days after he ALREADY FOUND a chunk of gold about the size of a tennis ball. No wonder he was back with tools.
Talking to Herald Sun, he said “It’s like catching a big fish and not knowing what to do with it! Where do we put it?”
He wanted to remain anonymous which to me is just SO much like the movie and I imagine him being a loveable Aussie bogan. Apparently, he even celebrated the find with mates and a few rounds of beer. I hope he remains anonymous so nothing can shatter this adorable illusion.
Then a hot minute later (by which I mean about a month), another anonymous fella out in remote Western Australia came across a decent gold nugget that weighed in at 3.23-kilos, which apparently boiled down to 2.11kg of actual gold. Which I think is like the part in the movie when the nugget melts in the bathtub?
Anyway, it’s smaller than old mate’s in VIC but still worth a hefty $110,000. I imagine this guy, who is apparently retired, to also be an adorable grandad type.
Ok so these nuggs aren’t the size of a small human like the movie, but I love this. So. Much.
Winning Ticket
Another classic urban myth type thing to happen, but is it just me or has it been happening a lot lately? The one where person buys lottery ticket, promptly forgets about said lottery ticket, wins a ridiculous mount of money on lost/forgotten lottery ticket, dies of shock months later when they recover lottery ticket and pop off to see if they won something ‘just in case’.
Like this casual $55 million lottery win in Melbourne that was unclaimed for months. Honestly it still might be, I just cbf googling it. And this $50 million prize that hasn’t been claimed in South Sydney. And then this one from just last week for $30 million which apparently noone has claimed yet, but it has been confirmed the lucky ticket was purchased at Pacific Square News in Maroubra.
There’s so many more, but I do not have the time or space to include them all. Seriously guys, if you put in the effort of buying a lotto ticket maybe keep a hold of it until it”s drawn?
Then of course there’s some people who have ALL the luck and basically stubbed their toes on a pot of rainbow gold by winning twice. Like old mate in Bondi and more recently this Melbourne couple.
Good Catch
In 1998 extremelly lucky duck and apparently good catch, Phil Ozersky, sat in the baseball stands presumably to enjoy cheap beer because does anyone actually like baseball? Anyway, then he caught a game ball. Apparently it was off the bat of a dude called Mark McGuire who was the ‘power hitter’ for the St. Louis Cardinal team.
All of that mean precisely jack to me tbh, but what does make sense is that because this particular hit apparently broke the season record for number of home runs, Ozersky was able to sell it for $3 million. THREE MILLION. That’s insane. Also fun twist, apparently it now belongs to that comic book guy, Todd McFarlane.
Thrifty Purchase
Ok so some people go rummaging through garage sales because they know what they’re looking for and then they find a cheap thing worth a buttload of money and that’s still great but seems supremely dodgy to me when you buy and in fact probably haggle something down to a few bucks when you KNOW you’re going to sell it off again for a fortune.
But what I’m talking about are those people who have NO idea what they’re buying. Who just stumble onto a fortune because they thought something looked kind of neat. To be honest most of these stories happen in America because they somehow seem to have more special junk?
Like the dude who bought a ripped painting for $4USD at a flea market because he liked the FRAME, only to discover that the frame was too far gone to be salvaged, but an official copy of the Declaration of Independence from 1776 was hidden in the backing. There were only 500 copies ever made, only 24 whose whereabouts are still known, and only 3 that are owned provately – not by like a museum or something. He auctioned it for $2,420,000USD. Insane!
Another American guy paid $30USD for a few pieces of second-hand furniture and a painting of flowers that he was using to cover up a hole in his wall. I love this guy’s style already. Years later he was playing a board game that sounds crazy boring to me, but basically makes players outbid each other for ‘artworks’. One of the real artworks featured in the game looked a lot like his hole-covering-bargain painting and long story short- turns out he’d actually bought a painting by American still-life artist Martin Johnson Heade that was worth $1.2 millionUSD.
Ok just one more, because this is so funny to me. In 1992 retired truck driver Teri Horton went rummaging through her local thrift store looking for a stupid gift to cheer her friend up, which is actually so sweet so I feel like she deserved this good karma. Anyway she picked the biggest, ugliest painting she could find and haggled down to $5USD. Her friend didn’t want the ugly thing either so she stuck it in a garage sale.
Here is my favourite bit. A local art teacher sees it, goes ‘hey that might be a Jackson Pollock’ – an artist so famous even I have heard the name – and Teri’s amazing response was “Who the f– is Jackson Pollock?“. Turns out it’s potentially worth $100 millionUSD.
Accidental Treasure Hunts
A contractor in Ohio was tearing out some bathroom walls of an 83 year old home and boom, finds $182,000 of Depression-era money hidden in them. Not surprisingly there was a whole bunch of fighting about who got a share/all of the money, further complicated by the fact the descendents of the original cash owners were found.
It’s a cute story but I think I’d still prefer to find this note tbh. No-one fights over feel good notes:
