Family being evicted finds family heirloom that saves their home

Shannon Arony, her husband James and their seven-year-old daughter Daisy, were being evicted from their home in London, when one of the removal men came across an engagement ring (not the one pictured). The family discovered they had a valuable heirloom on their hands, and it saved their house.

The Daily Record reported that the family had got into difficulties paying the mortgage and ended up owing the bank £20,000. They were facing certain eviction and repossession, and called in a removals company.

The removal man from removers.co.uk found the dusty diamond ring in the garage, and although 36-year-old Shannon said she thought it was a fake, she decided to get it valued just in case. That's when she was told it was worth an astonishing £80,000.

The Daily Mirror reported that Shannon told the bank, and they agreed to hold off repossessing the house, to give her and her husband James (38) time to sell it. The couple eventually got £62,000 for the ring.

Hidden treasure

It sounds incredible, but when it comes to people finding hidden treasure lying around their homes, many of the tales are like something out of Hollywood. Here are five of our favourites:

1. In 2013 a couple in Exeter decided to auction off an old stone they had been using as a doorstep. It was identified as a 1,300-year-old Buddhist temple step, and sold for £553,250.

2. In the same year, there was an old Chinese pot that had been used as a doorstop. The owner had inherited it from her dad, who had picked it up in a junk shop. She needed to buy a new car, so she took a handful of items along to an auction house, and the pot sold for £150,000.

3. In 2012 a Roman coffin fetched £40,000 at auction. It had been used for the previous 30 years as a planter in the back garden of a Northumberland couple.

4. Back in 2011, a man in Utah was moving into his new house when he came across a number of small stashes of cash. He collected it all together, and it came to a stunning total of $45,000. The new owner returned it to the family of the former occupant.

5. In a case in 2014, the stash of cash actually made it out of the property. Three students in New York picked up a sofa from a charity shop, and were disappointed to find it was lumpy and uncomfortable. They investigated more closely, and found $41,000 stashed in the cushions. They got in touch with the charity shop, who found the woman who had donated it: her family had sent it to the shop when she had gone into hospital.