If you ever inherit a property from a loved one, or you buy a home and decide to renovate it, make sure to check everything. You never know what might get unearthed during construction. Ironically, the best thing about a construction project isn’t always the finished results, but rather what was found in the midst of the project. Just ask these people, who uncovered some of the rarest, and in some cases, the most valuable treasures ever. Some of these items are so amazing that you’ll be grabbing your hammer, your shovel, and possibly calling a construction crew to work on your property. They started to dig on their Northern California property and found metal cans containing over 1,400 gold coins. The combined value of the coins was about $27,000, but could be worth $10 million because they’re from the 19th century and were in mint condition.
After buying their first home, they started renovating it. That’s when a contractor found suitcases with a cash total of $500,000. Sadly, the justice system decided that the heirs of the original homeowners should have the money. Jennings and McCallum tried to appeal but the ruling remained in favor of the heirs.
Giuseppe Cadili and Valeria Giarrusso were in the process of knocking down a wall to make a room larger when they found that every wall was covered with ornate silver and gold paint. Researchers investigated the site and believe that the property may have belonged to a 1700s North African merchant.
The Skanka construction crew was digging an area where a 400,000-square-foot office building was going to be built. But what they found was a 50-foot ship made of wood from the 1800s. City archeologist Joe Bagley told a CNN affiliate that the ship may have “run aground or crashed here during a storm.”
The room managed to stay intact, even through the years. As it turns out, Madame de Florian, a 23-year-old woman, was forced to abandon her residence in Paris due to Nazi raid. No one had tampered with her apartment until the woman died at age 91. The room remained exactly as pictured here for 68 years!
The Ramirez family decided to spruce up their kitchen, but when they started to remove the old paint on the walls, they uncovered ancient drawings that depicted the Mayan and Spanish people. Archaeologists believe that someone of influence and power once lived in the property.
The Fresno, California store’s previous owner, Casey Stephenson, passed away six years before the construction crew that Jones’ hired uncovered a bunch of diamonds hidden behind a shelf. When the news went viral, Stephenson’s daughter hired a lawyer to claim the diamonds for herself.
Gifford and Christine Watkins had been renovating their home in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, when they stumbled on a bunch of old newspapers and maps from the 19th century. This amazing discovery was located in the insulation, which they found after pulling out the carpets.
They were busy constructing a housing development when they noticed that they working on the foundation of a 12th-century mansion. Wessex Archaeology was brought in to inspect the site. They found roof slates, and decorated floor tiles which suggested this may have been a manor or a religious site.
The year was 2011, and construction workers stumbled on a woman who may have once belonged to the Ming Dynasty. The mummy was wearing expensive jewelry, and she also had fine clothing made out of silk. Her features held up well over the years.
Lewis Shaw, a contractor, discovered the letter originally written to Santa in 1943, while in the process of demolishing the home. Using social media, Shaw managed to track the little boy, who was now a grown man, and returned the letter to him.
The previous homeowner had hidden cash, bond certificates, and old stamps worth thousands of dollars in his garage attic. Unfortunately, he passed away, but John Ferrin, the new homeowner, found the items, and did the right thing by contacting the family’s heirs and returning everything to them.
After ripping out the carpet in the bedroom, he found that there was a huge Monopoly game board that had been painted on the hardwood floor. Although the names of certain stations and roads were missing, it was virtually a flawless replica of the original board game.
A construction crew had been busy doing routine maintenance when they found the remains of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church. According to archaeologists, it wasn’t uncommon to find structures built along the old road between Jerusalem and the coastal plain.
Gonzalez found the first original Superman comic ever hiding between some newspapers, which the original owner was using as insulation. He sold the comic at an auction for $175,000. Then, he discovered a copy of Superman #4 from the 1940s in the same place, which is worth about $5,000.
A Victorian kitchen had remained untouched after it was sealed away shortly after World War II. It also had everything you would expect to find from that time period all perfectly preserved, like the cookware, utensils, and a cookbook from 1911.
Irwin was in the process of installing some lights in his barn when workers found some unusual artifacts. It turns out that his home was built over a Roman villa, which contained animal bones, artifacts and coins dating as far back as 220 A.D.
What they found was an eight-foot tusk belonging to a 60,000-year-old Wooly mammoth. The tusk was fossilized underneath the foundation. But once it was discovered, it was taken to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.
It was a hospital built in the 15th century. The building played a vital role during the plague of the 1400s, but was destroyed in 1854 shortly after being decommissioned. Apple decided to honor the hospital’s history by incorporating elements of the old building into the construction of its new store.
Some of the items found inside the 121-year-old time capsule, which was a metal tin about the size of a shoe box, included a newspaper from 1894, a scroll, and a bottle of whisky. This inspired the Kingussie Primary School to make their own time capsule in the hopes that it will survive the test of time.
What began as a project to build a new apartment complex turned into an interesting discovery when construction crews unearthed two dozen coffins, which contained mostly intact human bodies. The area is believed to have belonged to the First Baptist Church’s burial ground.
15 percent of these bombs have remained dormant, and in 2016, a 4,000-pound bomb was unearthed in a construction site in Augsburg, Bavaria. This forced 54,000 Germans to evacuate while bomb specialists worked to diffuse it.
The year was 1991, and a construction crew had discovered the burial ground from the 17th century while working on a new building. Then, in 2006, President George W. Bush declared the site to be a national landmark.
