10 Extremely Lucky Finds That Made People Rich In Thrift Shops

What's the best thing you've ever found in a thrift store? Maybe a cool new outfit, unlike anything your friends at college wear. Or perhaps a vintage piece of jewelry, or even some bargain-priced furniture to decorate your apartment with. Today we're showing you 10 people who've had more luck than most when it comes to trawling through their local Goodwill store. Make sure to stick around until the end to hear about the guy who bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence for $2.48, which he then sold for almost half a million dollars. Before you go searching through your local Goodwill to make your fortune, make sure to like this video, subscribe to The Richest, and join our notification squad. Now let's get into 10 insanely lucky people that became rich through thrift stores. Zachary Bodish was just an unemployed Ohio man when he was browsing one particular thrift store, but one find would change his life forever. At the time, he spent his days wandering around different stores and looking for items that he could purchase, restore, and sell for a profit. It was the best way for him to make some money, so when he saw a replica Picasso print on sale for $14.14, he decided to splurge. If nothing else, the print would look nice in his own house. The poster had the word EXPOSITION written across the front, some French words, and the image of a warped round face. But a closer look at the bottom corner of the print revealed something incredible. What Zachary had purchased wasn't a replica print, but actually an original. He wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't checked out the very faded red letters on the lower right area, which he originally thought were random pencil marks from the thrift store. A bit of googling later, and Zachary learned that the print was one of 100 signed copies. He then sold it for $7,000. Zachary wasn't the only one to make a fortune from picking up what he thought was little more than a nice painting. Laura Stouffer was browsing at a flea market in Somerville looking for some goodies for her house when she struck gold. Or at least gold in the form of a very rare movie poster. She spotted a framed print of Shepherd's Call, a painting depicting a border collie finding a lost lamb in a snowbank. However, it wasn't this print that caught her attention, but another poster tucked behind it. Unlike Zachary, Laura had some knowledge as to what she was seeing as she used to work as an antique dealer. So imagine her excitement when she realized that after digging around for so long, she finally found something worth more than a few pennies. Beneath the lithograph sandwiched between the print and its cardboard backing was a much rarer find, an original window card poster from the 1930 film classic All Quiet on the Western Front. She sold it for $20,000. That was certainly a fortunate find indeed, but one student might just have topped that finding with another flea market product, a sofa. A student in Berlin who wished to keep their identity anonymous splashed out on a flea market sofa to spruce up their home. The couch set them back $215, which seemed a little expensive for a flea market purchase. But there was more than meets the eye with this item because the student uncovered something incredible hiding away inside, a painting called Preparation to Escape to Egypt. The painting, a tiny 10 by 15 inch oil piece, was painted by an unknown artist close to Venetian painter Carlo Sarasani between 1605 and 1620. Not much more was known about it other than the fact that it was worth a large amount of money. When the student took their finding to experts for valuation, they were probably surprised with the answer. It sold for $27,630 at a Hamburg art auction. So we imagine this student probably cashed out on a slightly more expensive couch afterwards to celebrate. Let's move away from impressive artworks and move on to a more typical Goodwill purchase, watches. If you're on the look out for a vintage watch, unlike any of the others that your friends wear, then a vintage or thrift shop might be the best place to look. But when Zach Norris decided to look for a secondhand push cart at his local Goodwill, he got more than he bargained for. He got distracted by a collection of watches, an interest point of his, and decided to take a closer look. At first glance, there was nothing overly special about the store's options. It was mostly old fossils with dead batteries. But upon closer examination, Zach noticed a $5.99 watch with a dial that read LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm. He knew that it was worth a lot more than $5.99, but wasn't entirely sure just how much. So he bought the watch and took it to get valued. Then he discovered the watch was a rare 1959 LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm, one of the most coveted watches ever made by Jaeger LeCoultre, and one of the first designs to feature an alarm used by divers. When he posted a picture on a vintage watch reseller's page, it sold for $35,000. Our next flea market find was something initially bought for a child to play with, despite its valuation of thousands of dollars. Thea Jordan from Hampshire, England, spotted the beautiful gem in a toy box that she bought for $25. The toy box was supposed to be a kit for her daughter to play with when she was bored. It became a favorite of the daughters, who wore the gem out to the post office or to school on special days. But when the gem was spotted in a jewelry box when Thea got her engagement ring and shirt, it turned out that this gem should have been kept in much safer hands. The Topaz Brooch was thought to be a magnificent example of early 19th century jewelry and was possibly part of a tiara or necklace worn by a Russian Tsarina. While it first went up for auction at around $4,000, it actually sold for more than 10 times that price at $42,000. It traveled to New York and Hong Kong for exclusive viewings by potential buyers, before eventually being sold for that sky-high price. When you look at the markup rate on all of these items, you'll realize that each and every time these people have bagged a bargain, but no one seems to have done it quite as well so far as Sean and Ricky McAvoy. These guys are professional pickers, which means they spend their days searching Goodwill stores for vintage clothing to resell. A lot of the time, they'll look in the Goodwill bins, the place where everything costs less than a dollar. One day, they made a routine stop to a bin in North Carolina, where they found a West Point College sweater from the early 50s. The sweater set the pair of them back 58 cents, making it one of the best value pieces even in a bargain bin. But the true value of this sweater was yet to be unveiled. It turned out that it had originally belonged to football legend Vince Lombardi. It had his name on the inside, and there were even famous pictures of the coach wearing it. It sold at auction for over $43,000. While all of these people seemed to stumble upon their fortunes accidentally, one family had been gearing up for this moment their entire lives. The family, from Kent in England, had spent years collecting items they deemed expensive before inviting an auctioneer around to value everything. The auctioneer noted two cups, which although were damaged, looked to be quite expensive. But when they were taken to auction, they exceeded everyone's expectations. The intricately carved Chinese libation cups were dated from the Qing Dynasty, back to the year 1644. Made from rhinoceros horn, these rare items sold for just over $60,000. Cups made out of rhinoceros horn were very popular during the Ming and Qing Dynasties when they were used as libation cups for ritual purposes. The family who initially purchased them probably didn't know the history surrounding them, but they were probably over the moon with the findings and the financial gain that came from their hunting. It meant that all of the time they'd spent trawling through flea markets and charity shops wasn't for nothing after all. That last family might have dedicated a lot of their spare time to hunting out gems in charity stores, but one woman who took it to the next level was Natalie Gomez, who eventually left her job because of her thrift store finds. Natalie's side hustle was to purchase clothes from a variety of high street and thrift stores before selling them for a profit. When her business took off, she dedicated between 60 to 80 hours a week to delving deep into thrift stores in her local area, as well as near her parents' house. As she ramped up her business, Natalie watched her apartment transform from a place to sleep into more of a stockpiling center with over 1,000 pieces of clothing hung across two closets and clothing racks. She started making more than $10,000 a month from her goodwill picks in an online store and eventually decided to quit her full-time job to focus on thrifting and rehoming. Now she's crossed the six-figure mark from her findings and there's no end in sight to her reselling success. But let's go back to accidental finds. These last two that we'll be showing you raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for their owners in a pure stroke of luck. John Richard was looking around the second-hand stores in a fancy area of London when he stumbled across a uniquely patterned bag. The Philip Treacy bag had a distinctive Elvis Presley design by pop artist Andy Warhol and it's believed to be one of only 10 ever made. John paid $25 for the bag, knowing that it was worth much more. Its retail price would have been between $300 to $400 but its resale as an almost one-of-a-kind item was significantly higher. He decided to sell the bag privately and had offers of up to $450,000 from a buyer in China. Auctioneers in Bond Street advised John to hang on to the rare find because there was a chance that it would increase in value even more as time passed. But John wanted to sell the bag in order to open a hairdressing salon for his partner. If there's one rags-to-riches story that we can't finish this video without talking about, it's the tale of Tennessean Michael Sparks, who found a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Michael noticed the item because of its beautiful detailing but assumed it was nothing more than a replica. He paid $2.48 for the item, which was a standard price according to the store manager. But it turned out that the copy was one that John Quincy Adams commissioned William Stone to make in 1820. Only 200 of them were created and Michael's version was number 36. He sold the document to a Utah investment firm for $477,650, causing a national stir. But that wasn't the beginning of this thrift store find. A man named Stan Caffey had initially bought the copy a decade before at a yard sale. He'd paid $10 for this Declaration of Independence and had begrudgingly given it to charity when he and his wife had a clear-out. We bet that Stan wishes he'd kept hold of his copy now. Michael, on the other hand, decided to buy a brand-new used car with his fortune, as well as helping out family and his local church. That's all for 10 insanely lucky people that became rich through thrift stores. Have you ever found anything valuable at a thrift store? Let us know in the comments. Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.