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{{trope}}
[[File:violin3 2577.jpg|link=Cracked.com|frame| Hey, are you throwing that Stradivarius out?]]
It's an artifact of earth-shaking power. Its value is immeasurable, its history is the stuff of legends. It's.... being offered at a clearance price at the [[Last Place You Look|local discount store]].
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{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Saito's talking sword in ''[[
▲* Chii, in ''[[Chobits]]'', is found in a dumpster.
▲* Saito's talking sword in ''[[Zero no Tsukaima]]'' was sold for dirt cheap in a weapon shop. Since [[Named Weapons|Derflinger]] is actually the [[Cool Sword|traditional weapon/partner of the Gandalfr]], [[There Are No Coincidences|karma almost certainly arranged for him to be in the shop solely to end up in Saito's hands]]. In fact, Derflinger looks pretty crappy and likely handles poorly in the hands of anyone but Gandalfr. It's a good bet everyone else ''thought'' it was worthless junk.
* In ''Ressentiment'', the game containing the original AI girl of which all others are simplified copies is found lying under a rack of disks in an ordinary game shop.
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', one of Zoro's swords, which is cursed, but immensely powerful if it can be controlled, was found in the armory equivalent of a bargain bin, precisely because it was cursed.
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* In [[Soukou no Strain]], Sara finds a discarded doll in the scrapyard area of a ship while looking for a pendant someone stole from her locker. The doll is pretty dirty and seemingly abandoned, and when Sara sees EMLY imprinted on the back of the doll, she gives her the name Emily, and grows attached to the doll. Emily also allows her to control a Strain, a mecha that needs a specialized [[MacGuffin]] in order to activate (Sara's was destroyed in the first episode, so she was unable to control one again until this point).
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* Happens at the end of the second ''[[Cerebus]]'' book, ''High Society'', where it turns out the priceless bird statue that Cerebus could have used earlier to unite the Church factions was given to him with a bunch of other random trash from a hobo who seemed to have Cerebus confused with someone else about a third of the way through the book. {{spoiler|He destroys it, since he no longer has the political capital to make use of it himself.}}
* Seen in a ''[[Witchblade (Comic Book)|Witchblade]]'' spinoff, in which a medieval woman warrior ([[MST3K Mantra|don't ask about the plausibility]]) discovers the Witchblade while shoveling manure.
* In the ''[[Tintin]]'' book ''The Secret of the Unicorn'', Tintin buys a model ship from a street vendor to give to Captain Haddock as a gift. It turns out the ship has a scroll concealed in the mast which, when combined with two others from identical ships, leads to a fortune in gold and jewels.
* ''[[Archie Comics]]'':
** [[Double Subversion]]
** In one story set in winter, Archie wants to impress Veronica by giving her a ride in a snowmobile, and is scammed into buying an old lemon from an [[Honest John's Dealership]]. Naturally, Reggie revels in his rival's stupidity, betting him he can circle a block ten times in his new snowmobile before Archie can do so even once in his - and Reggie easily wins. However, when the humiliated Archie finally gets to Veronica's house, Mr. Lodge recognizes it as a very rare antique, offering Archie his own expensive modern snowmobile in exchange for it, plus $500 in spending money, plus the services of his chauffeur for the night. In the final scene of the story, Reggie is back at the dealer, begging him to pull the same scam on him.
== [[Film]] ==
* Woody in ''[[Toy Story
* ''[[Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders]]'' is the embodiment of this trope, and it even gets more trope-y when the Lord of Evil is in the form of a monkey cymbalist that's stolen and sold to a ratty toy shop.
* Audrey II in ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'' mysteriously appears in a plant vendor's inventory.
* In ''[[The Forbidden Kingdom]]'', the golden staff of the legendary Monkey King is found in a Chinatown pawn shop specializing in Wuxia DVD's.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* David in ''[[Animorphs]]'' was about to sell the morphing cube online before the Animorphs caught wind of it. Worse, he was about to unwittingly sell it to ''[[Big Bad|Visser Three]]'', probably for way, way less than it would have been worth even if the Visser didn't intend on infesting David the moment he sold it.
* Robert Louis Stevenson's short story
*
** In ''[[The Hobbit]]'' (written first), Bilbo finds the
*** Then in ''The Lord of the Rings'', we discover that Gollum's friend first found the ring many years ago just lying at the bottom of a river. So it seems like Bilbo has an "ordinary" ring of invisibility-until we learn it is far more than that.
** Also in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', Bilbo and the dwarves find Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver and Glamdring the Foe Hammer in the trolls' lair, amidst the bones of their victims. These powerful swords are elven blades forged in Gondolin during the First Age. How the trolls got them is unknown, but Elrond suggests the trolls plundered other plunderers.
** To a lesser extent, the small dagger Bilbo also finds in the trolls' lair. He doesn't think much of it at the time; it's a useful blade to someone his size, but doesn't seem to be anything else. As it turns out, it's also an elven blade forged in Gondolin. He later calls it "Sting".
** Gandalf thinks that Bilbo doesn't know the true value of the [[Mithril]] mail shirt that Thorin give him, and that he left it as a ''mathom'' in the Shire. The truth is that Bilbo really knows its true value and gave it to Frodo.
* The eponymous book in ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]'', found in (or rather, stolen from) an unsuccessful antique bookstore.
*
* Abdullah of ''[[Castle in the Air]]'' buys a plot-important flying carpet from a tattered, dirty traveling carpet salesman.
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
** And again in ''[[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (novel)|Half-Blood Prince]]'', Harry hides the Prince's potions book in a room where lots of other students (and teachers!) have hidden things they didn't want found over the years. One such item, which Harry uses to mark the place where he hid the book, is {{spoiler|the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, and another of Voldemort's Horcruxes.}}
* [[Follow the Leader|Mirroring]] ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', the eponymous ''[[Shannara|Sword
* In ''The Serpent's Egg'' trilogy, [[Our Dragons Are Different|Typhoon]] gives a busted up crown to [[Bratty Half-Pint|Penelope]] as a reward for watching a very much alive and ready to hatch ''dragon egg'', which she was told was a rock. It was far bigger than her. {{spoiler|The dinky little thing turned out to be the [[MacGuffin|Crown]] they had been looking for the entire time, but didn't realize it till she placed it on the head... of the enemy. It proceeded to [[Good Hurts Evil|kill the]] [[Twist Ending|evil]]. Then, she put it on the Elf Prince's head, to no real effect.}} Notably, she tried to steal from Typhoon earlier, and had to clean his entire hoard with a bowl of... [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|spittle]]. Which was pretty stupid, seeing as he literally saved their lives from a damn army before that. {{spoiler|But maybe, Typhoon knew about it, being the leader of the Black Dragons.}}
* In ''[[Heralds of Valdemar|Oathbreakers]]'', Kethry happens to find a useless-looking dull-bladed old sword abandoned in a cabin in the mountains; she and Tarma speculate that it must have been a decorative sword and the gems and gilding were all stripped off by previous travelers, leaving behind what was left as junk. Kethry, on an impulse, takes it along when they leave, and it turns out to be the ancestral Sword that Sings, traditionally used to choose the proper ruler of the country of Rethwellan.
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter|Prospero Lost]]'', Miranda finds a chameleon cloak in a second-hand store. Both its presence and her discovery get explained later.
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* The time-travelling Glass in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' is found in a warehouse where everything else is random junk like sheep bones.
=== Periodicals ===
* One of the illustrations on the back of a ''Reader's Digest'', entitled "Treasure Hunt", had a man at a garage sale looking at a bust of Lincoln. If you look closely, you can see a copy of [[Superman|''Action Comics'' #1]] sitting in a box of old newspapers.▼
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'', a magic mirror that will allow the heroes to go back to their own world is for sale dirt cheap, as no one knows what it is. When its true nature is discovered, however?
* This is more or less the premise of ''[[Warehouse 13]]'' - it's essentially a Grail In The Garbage of the Week show. Your mileage may vary as to whether the eponymous warehouse itself qualifies as an "unlikely place."
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** ''Cash in the Attic''. Some of the stuff sells for less than expected, but sometimes truly rare and valuable items are found.
* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', an orb that can restore people's souls is sold as a paperweight.
** For that matter, Giles once bought a magical talisman from a sorcerer, convinced it was a knock-off. Not only is it real, it's used as part of [[
* A recurring sketch on ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' involves a seller at a garage sale casually selling incredibly valuable artifacts for a low price. The Holy Grail itself, for instance, was sold for five pounds, as having already gained eternal life from drinking it, he sees no reason to keep it around. And later, the wardrobe that's the entrance to [[The Chronicles of Narnia|Narnia]], as now that he has a garden at his new house, he doesn't really need the extra space.
* Reality shows like ''[[Auction Hunters]]'' and ''[[Storage Wars]]'' have these found in abandoned storage units, when the owner couldn't keep up with the fees.
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* In one ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' [[Cold Open]], Reese accidentally breaks a cheap painting's frame. Before he glues the painting back down, he gets the chance to laugh at the name of the artist who painted the one framed beneath it: "[[Its Pronounced Tropay|Pic-ass-o]]".
* An episode of ''[[Modern Marvels]]'' about garbage reclamation showed a box of seemingly ordinary gray dust; then we're told that it's over $1000 worth of platinum.
* In an episode of ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'', Piggy (a [[The Scrounger| scrounger]] and [[Knowledge Broker]] for both the good guys ''and'' bad guys) is scrounging around the trash dump as he always does, and finds a winning lottery ticket worth $10 million! He uses the money to open his own business, hoping it will help him ''stop'' having to work as a scrounger and knowledge broker.
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
* Invoked constantly in ''[[
▲* One of the illustrations on the back of a ''Reader's Digest'', entitled "Treasure Hunt", had a man at a garage sale looking at a bust of Lincoln. If you look closely, you can see a copy of [[Superman|Action Comics #1]] sitting in a box of old newspapers.
▲== Video Games ==
▲* Invoked constantly in [[Film/The Darkness|The Darkness]] II, with Jackie collecting various incredibly powerful and amazingly rare religious artifacts just laying around New York. Sometimes justified by the fact that he is fighting an old cult that has dedicated themselves to controlling The Darkness, and would have collected these artifcats. Other times....why are the ashes of Cain hidden in a New York Cemetery? Why is the seashell containing Gods own words lying on the subway floor? Why is a sword forged from two of the angels of death in a mob warehouse? And why is the device for capturing and controlling the Angelus located inside The Darkness itself?
* [[Ditto Fighter|Charade]]'s [[Backstory]] in ''[[Soul Calibur]]'' says he bought shards of the [[Artifact of Doom]] Soul Edge from a random merchant.
* In ''[[Icewind Dale]]'', the best longsword in the game, Pale Justice, is found on the corpse of a hapless adventurer in Dorn's Deep. What's more is that its inventory icon is the same as any regular longsword (by the time you're using +
* Can be done deliberately in ''[[Evil Genius (video game)|Evil Genius]]''. You just stole the Ark of the Covenant? Eh, put it in the break room.
* In ''[[Fable II]]'', Murgo the merchant has the [[MacGuffin]]...he actually knows it's magic, but he has no idea what it can actually do. It is revealed in a DLC that it was given to him by your mentor, {{spoiler|Theresa}}, which [[Batman Gambit|set the whole plot in motion]].
* In the ''[[Touhou]]'' [[All There in the Manual|printed side-story]], ''Curiosities of Lotus Asia'', [http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Curiosities_of_Lotus_Asia:_Chapter_06 one chapter] revolved around Marisa asking Rinnosuke to reinforce her [[Amulet of Concentrated Awesome|Mini-Hakkero]] with some of the rare [[Thunderbolt Iron|Hihi'irokane/Crimson Ore]] he had some of so that it would never rust. In exchange, Rinnosuke asked for... the pile of scrap iron that Marisa obsessively collects for no reason. Why did he want Marisa's pile of junk? {{spoiler|Rinnosuke had identified the [[Public Domain Artifact|Sword of Kusanagi]] amongst them}}.
* In ''[[Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden]]'', Barkley at one point visits Spalding Building,<ref>[[It Makes Sense in Context|don't]] [[wikipedia:Spalding (sports equipment)|ask]]</ref> where he can find a character's [[Infinity+1 Sword]] in one of the trash cans. He also lampshades it when he finds a powerful healing item in another can: ''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|"It's B-Ball Juice! Who the hell throws B-Ball Juice away?"]]''
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', Far Song, generally considered one of if not the best bow in the game, has apparently spent decades sitting buried in the stockroom of a tiny podunk blacksmith shop in Redcliffe. {{spoiler|It's so well-buried that the only way to get it is to kill Owen, or get him to commit suicide by failing to find his daughter, and wait for his replacement to move in and go through his stuff.}}
* Most ''[[Pokémon]]'' games have the Leftovers, one of the most useful held items in the series, hidden in a trash can.
** Somewhat justified in-universe. It ''is'' just a small pile of half-eaten food...that just so happens to be able to be able to regenerate itself, giving the Pokémon an infinite supply of free health.
* In ''[[Borderlands]]'', you can sometimes find a really good gun when you open up a garbage can.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' has a heavily hat-based in-game economy between the players, where some virtual hats can cost several hundreds of real life dollars. This also means that there are varying degrees of currency, including using other expensive hats as a large denomination of metal (the primary currency) to free up spaces in one's backpack. One of the common things newbies do is to trade away a pair of earbuds or a Bill's Hat for a bunch of weapons. Both are promotional items that seem worthless, but on the hat market are worth 40 and 20 real life money (or 40 and 20 in-game refined metal). By comparison, any given weapon in the game is worth 1/18th of a buck (18 weapons to make 1 refined metal).
* Happens often in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** In the sacred spring behind Skyview Temple, there are several waterfalls [[Scenery Porn|adorning the place]]. {{spoiler|One of them is the Sacred Water Faron needs to heal her
** During the search for the Key fragments through Eldin Volcano to open the Earth Temple, Link gets past a seemingly out-of-place metallic pinwheel in a crag that houses a watchtower. {{spoiler|This pinwheel is necessary to make one of the wrecked windmills work again in Skyloft, so a podium activates and Link can play the Song of the Goddess there to gain access to the Thunderhead.}}
** Also in Eldin Volcano, there is a crystal ball that adorns the entrance to the Earth Temple. {{spoiler|A good replacement for Sparrot's crystal ball when it breaks.}}
** In Lanayru Desert, there is a color wheel in a hill southeast. {{spoiler|This is the wheel Dodoh lost while he was preparing the last details for his flight minigame.}}
* Character-based example: The seemingly mute dinosaur in ''[[Star Fox Adventures]]'', located next to the underground caverns south of Thorntail Hollow is {{spoiler|the fourth Gatekeeper, giving access to Dragon Rock.}}
* In ''[[Dead Island]]'', the vendors will sometimes sell white, common weapons, which have much, much better stats than the rarer, colored weapons. For instance, you could see them selling a blue colored machete which does 500 damage, then the white colored machete right below it does 650 damage...
* In ''[[How I Killed Your Master]],'' Liu Wong pulls the [[MacGuffin|governor's seal]] - which will grant its bearer a claim to rule the region - out of a random well when he goes to get a drink.
== [[Web Original]] ==
▲== Web Original ==
* ''[[The Angry Video Game Nerd]]'' acquired a copy of the gold cover Nintendo World Championship, the absolutely rarest game in the world in a sale where the previous owner bundled it in with other other much more common games. The bundle contained two copies of the game, the other being a much more common reproduction.
* Some of the artifacts held by the [[SCP Foundation]] were discovered in this manner.
* Satan's wife, [[Take That|Kim Kardashian]], left ''[[Son of the Mask]]'' in the human world in a trash can. Cue the ''[[Nostalgia Critic]]'' picking it up to review. It turns out to be possessed and was ''[[Lord of the Rings (film series)|the One DVD!]].''
{{quote|Well, if it's in a public garbage can, [[Bile Fascination|it must be worth reviewing.]]}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In one episode of ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]'', Ray finds himself in possession of the shears belonging to the Three Fates, finding them on the ground just as he needs to cut something. He keeps them, forcing Clotho to chase him all over New York to try to (discreetly) get them back, because she's the one who dropped them in the first place. As far as he can tell, they're just a pair of scissors, but they're ''really awesome'' scissors.
* ''[[American Dad]]'': In "Return of the Bling", Roger finds what is apparently the One Ring near the site of a plane crash...and then promptly throws it away.
{{quote|'''Roger:''' It turns you invisible in the middle of nowhere? What good is that? Where were you when I farted at Danny's wedding?}}
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'': "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" begins at a swap meet, in which Homer finds a treasure trove of such items. He dismisses them all: "[[wikipedia:Declaration of Independence|Junk]], [[wikipedia:Action Comics 1|junk]], [[wikipedia:Inverted Jenny|the airplane's upside down]], [[wikipedia:Stradivarius|Strad-di-who-vious]]?!..."
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** Subverted in another episode, when [[Those Two Guys|Monarch Henchmen #21 and #24]] find what seems to be a ''[[Laser Blade|working lightsaber]]'' at the Venture Compound garage sale, and use it to challenge [[Rated "M" for Manly|Brock Samson]]. [[Oh Crap|Unfortunately, it's just a prototype and doesn't actually work]], which they'd have known if they hadn't been too busy geeking out to listen to Rusty when they bought it. Fortunately, Brock was too busy and/or bemused to actually kill them over it.
* In ''[[Megas XLR]]'', the eponymous [[Humongous Mecha]] is left in a scrapyard for several years, before Coop buys it for a few bucks. Which he never pays.
* In ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' the kerwood derby, a hat that makes you absurdly smart, is found in a store.
* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]''
** In the episode "The Ninja Sword of Nowhere" from [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 series)|the 1987 series]], the eponymous sword is a powerful weapon made of [[Unobtainium]] that can cleave through dimensional boundaries. The Turtles find it among the inventory of a pawn shop.
** In an episode of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 series)|the 2003 series]]'', Donatello meets an artist named Kirby (an obvious [[Homage]] to [[Jack Kirby]]) who can bring anything he draws to life due to a magical gemstone on his pen, which he claims he found in a pile of coal.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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* [http://www.cracked.com/article_17314_5-pieces-junk-that-turned-out-to-be-invaluable-artifacts.html 5 Pieces of Junk That Turned Out To Be Invaluable Artifacts], via ''[[Cracked.com]]''
* ''[[The Passion of Joan of Arc]]'', one of cinema's greatest classics, was thought to have been lost until a nearly perfect print turned up in the closet of an insane asylum.
* Oskar Schindler's list of names (the real one) was found in an attic in the late
* The winning $200,000 game-piece for a 1995 Wendy's contest was found on a discarded fries container by [http://www.deseretnews.com/article/447062/GARBAGE-COLLECTORS-TRASH-YIELDS-A-200000-TREASURE.html garbage man Craig Randall].
* A Tennessee man visiting a museum gift shop wound up buying a copy of the Declaration of Independence as a souvenir, but after noticing it didn't seem all too fresh, he had it appraised. It turned out to be an original draft, one of the few in existence, worth almost as much as the genuine document.
* One of the lost episodes of early ''[[Doctor Who]]'' was found in a church basement.
* In 2003, a set of [[World War I]] Renault FTs (a near tie for the first tank ever, and the first tank to fit the modern definition of "tank") were found in an Afghanistan junkyard. An American soldier who recognized what they were sent photos to Fort Knox, who promptly started the process of getting them moved to the Army's official museum (with permission from the Afghanistan government) to fill the missing hole in their collection.
* In May of 2013, an old scroll that had been lying around in plain sight in the Bologna University library was identified as an 800-year old copy of the Torah, likely the oldest complete copy in existence<ref>aside from maybe the Leningrad Codex</ref>, and possibly worth millions.
* A Sturmgewehr StG 44, the grand-daddy of the modern assault rifle, [https://www.yahoo.com/gma/blogs/abc-blogs/valuable-wwii-gun-police-buy-back-022155231--abc-news-topstories.html was encountered at a Hartford Connecticut police gun buy-back]. The police who accepted it knew what it was, and convinced the owner to hold on to it and explore options of selling it to a historical museum instead of subjecting it to the melt-down that all the other guns at the buy-back were heading for.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:More Than Meets the Eye]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Grail in the Garbage]]▼
[[Category:One Man's Trash Is Another's Treasure]]
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