I've never personally discovered anything of real interest, but I have two buddies who have scored big-time. First one was my friend Ray (RIP, Ray...) who bought a mid-70s Thunderbird at auction. Paid $2,200 for the car. In cleaning out the trunk of the car, he found 25 $100 bills rolled up with a rubber band. Can you say free car?
The next was a friend who shall remain nameless. He bought a vintage travel trailer that an old fella used to live in. He bought it from the adult kids after the gent had passed. Now, this was a larger trailer, and had been set-up in a rundown trailer park for something like fifteen years. The kids were not involved in the old guy's life, and wanted nothing to do with the trailer, or its contents. My friend paid $1,500 for everything. He started cleaning it up, getting ready to resell the thing, when he found a $100 bill under a table lamp. Cool! Then he found a couple hundred under some books. Now it's getting interesting. Over the course of the night, he found...and I kid you not...just over $25,000 in cash spread throughout the trailer! Not $2,500, but $25,000! It would appear the old man had a distrust of banks, or something. My buddy struggled for a couple weeks with what to do with the money. The trailer and its contents were sold to him, and he had a clean title to it. The guy's kids had shown no regard to the old man's stuff, and just wanted to be rid of it. So, he paid off his mom's credit card, and put money down on a piece of property in Oregon.
Now how's that for a cool find?!?