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It’s the stuff of a bargain hunter’s dream – to be rummaging through the items at a car boot sale or antique shop and stumble across a priceless artefact.

But in most cases, those discounted items come at an affordable price for a reason – because they’re not worth untold riches.

Every now and then though, a hidden treasure is unearthed. ����ý Bitesize takes a look at some of the incredible second-hand discoveries people have made.

Van Gogh-ing, going, gone

While not one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Peasant Woman in front of a Farmhouse, which dates to 1885, is believed to have been one of his earliest pieces ever sold.

A farmer accepted the work as part payment for a job in 1929, hanging it in his family’s nursery, before it was sold for just £4 in 1967 – around £60 in today’s prices according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator.

The following year, the painting was found by Luigi Grosso in an antique shop in London. Grosso believed that it was an original Van Gogh and paid £45 for it – the equivalent of just over £650 in 2023.

Grosso worked with an expert to x-ray the painting and discovered an earlier Van Gogh piece on the canvas, confirming its authenticity. The painting was put up for auction in 1970 in New York and fetched just over £45,000 – worth almost £600,000 in 2023.

The painting has been sold several more times since, and in March 2020 was sold for almost £13.5 million – presumably to the frustration of the family that sold it for just £4.

A touch of glass

In the car boot sale game, there’s probably only one thing better than finding a bargain – being told on the ����ý’s Antiques Roadshow that your find is worth a fortune.

That happened in 2008 to the owner of a glass vase made by French Art Nouveau designer Rene Lalique in 1929.

The glass vase – known as Feuilles Fougeres – stood 12.5cm (5in) tall and had been used as a plant pot after being purchased at a sale in Dumfries for £1. Its owner was set to throw it away before taking it to an Antiques Roadshow valuation.

They were then told it was a valuable Lalique original – and that the value of his work had risen considerably in recent years.

The owner placed the item up for auction at Christie’s - earning £32,450 for the vase. Not bad for a £1 investment.

Diamonds are forever

Usually, if you’re walking around with jewellery worth comfortably more than half a million pounds, you’re a top Hollywood star. It’s less likely that you’ve been a customer at a west London car boot sale.

But that’s exactly what happened to one woman who bought a diamond ring for £10 in the 1980s. The owner thought the piece was a theatre prop and wore it on a daily basis. They thought it was worthless as the diamond didn’t sparkle.

But after 30 years of wearing it, they spoke to experts at the auction house Sotheby’s, who told them it was a valuable 26-carat diamond.

They believed it was a 19th Century diamond and valued it at around £350,000 – but when it went up for sale in 2017, it actually fetched more than £650,000.

Let sleeping babies lie

The owner of a sleeping baby figure, thought to be more than 270 years old, was thrilled to find out they were in possession of an original – and possibly valuable – antique.

They purchased the figure from a sale in Gloucestershire in the 1990s for just £2 – and were told it could be worth up to £30,000.

The piece was found to be an original porcelain figure made in Chelsea, London in the mid-18th Century at the start of porcelain production in England. Experts felt it was one of the earliest attempts at portraying a figure in porcelain made in the UK.

The item went up for sale in March 2023, but did not reach the pre-auction anticipated price, selling for £12,000 – still representing a cool profit for its savvy antique-hunting previous owner.

This article was published in November 2023