People Who Tragically Threw Away Their Fortune

Someone in Australia used their copy of Action Comics #1, the first ever appearance of Superman in comics, for padding the walls of a wooden cabinet and totally forgot about it. Years later, a man bought that cabinet at a thrift store and restored the comic to sell it for thousands of dollars.

A woman sold her old wooden desk for $100 but forgot her life savings ($98,000) were in it. The man who bought it couldn't fit it through his office door, so he dismantled it and found the stash hidden. Luckily for the woman, he returned it all.

A veterinarian took his wedding ring off before surgery, and accidentally threw it in the trash alongside medical utensils. He spent two days in the landfill trying to find it, and he eventually did.

The Oberlins were cleaning their freezer in Ohio and threw away a plastic bag they thought was trash. That bag contained $25,000 in cash from grandma's savings, and they eventually recovered them from the waste collection agency.

Workers at J. Birnbach Inc. were helping their boss move stuff to another floor and threw three wooden boxes with diamonds in a trashcan. A security guard checked it and saved the diamonds, but sold a couple before returning the rest.

Employee's at the Sotheby's auction house in London put a Lucian Freud painting into a crushing machine, thinking the crate was empty. The painting was valued at over $150,000.

Workers found an Enigma Machine tossed into a recycling skip in Buckinghamshire, UK, and realized it's worth more than $10,000.

Frank Vague was the proud owner of one of the only eight 1938 Brough Superior motorcycles ever made, but he didn't know how much it was worth. Years later, an auction house found it abandoned and forgotten in his barn. It was sold for almost $400,000.

In 2013, James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive that contained over $900 million in Bitcoin. He's been trying to get his hands on the landfill to get them back, but a court ruled he has no right to recover it in 2025.

Nigel Reynolds was one of the first journalists to interview author J.K. Rowling before she became famous. He got an early copy of the first Harry Potter book but thought it'd flop, so he threw it away. First editions can be found at $60,000 or more these days.