Nearly every city on Earth has them—derelict ruins, the cracked shells of concrete titans long vanquished and forgotten but for their towering silhouettes outlined against the setting Sun. Decades-old factories, abandoned train stations reclaimed by nature, even whole islands that once vibrated with the lives and dreams of generations, all cast by the wayside and left to rot.

But sometimes, the entropy of decay gives way to something breathtaking. Whether at the hand of man or by the slow creep of nature’s tenacious grip, some ruins end up in a surreal twilight between ash and phoenix, poised for something greater than anyone could have imagined.

10Kolmanskop

The story of Kolmanskop begins, as so many African tragedies do, with a diamond. In 1908, German settlers were trying to build a railway across the Namib Desert to connect the coast with the Namibian town of Keetmanshoop. One of the workers, Zacharius Lewala, stumbled across a rough diamond in the desert sands, and he brought it to his supervisor. News of the find spread like wildfire across the German colonies, and miners were soon pouring into the desert by the hundreds.

Diamonds on the surface are rare, but legend has it that in Kolmanskop you could walk the desert at night and pick the glittering stones off the sand by moonlight. A makeshift city was built right on the windswept dunes, and at the height of its boom, there were over 1,200 people living in Kolmanskop. Times change, however, and with the combination of dropping diamond prices following World War I and the discovery of more diamonds farther south, Kolmanskop’s popularity dwindled. Miners and their families packed their bags, abandoned their homes, and left the desert.

Less than 50 years after Zacharius Lewala found his diamond, Kolmanskop was a ghost town. But wooden homes in the desert don’t rot. Within a few years, sand had begun to drift into the open windows and doorways of the buildings as the Namib sought to reclaim its own. The entire complex is now a popular tourist destination, with half a century’s worth of dunes piled up inside the residences, ballrooms, theaters, and hospitals.

9Teufelsberg Listening Post

An artificial dome atop an artificial hill from a time of artificial fears, this abandoned Cold War–era radar post outside Berlin, Germany, rises from the forests like a phallic beacon shining its turgid light upon the pages of a confused history. Built in 1963, the listening post was used by the US National Security Agency to allegedly intercept military and diplomatic communications during the Cold War. Records are vague as to the exact nature of the work performed there, and with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, the place was gutted, and the station was abandoned to the elements.

Perhaps even more interesting than the station itself is the history of the Teufelsberg hill on which it stands. The hill—the highest point in Berlin—is actually a massive heap of the city’s rubble from World War II, all dumped over a Nazi military college that’s still intact somewhere beneath all those tons of debris.

Since the listening station powered down in 1991, the facility has changed hands frequently. Each new buyer begins with an ambitious goal to convert the bulbous radomes into a hotel or resort or museum or what have you, but so far, every plan has fallen through, leaving the odd structures to serve merely as gravestones for the corpse of a past Berlin. The facility is currently off-limits, but trespassers say the view of the city from the top is incredible.

8Boston’s Long Island

Boston’s Long Island doesn’t want to be inhabited. Not to be confused with the similarly named island in New York, this 2.8-kilometer (1.75 mi) stretch of land in the Boston Harbor has been the site of numerous failed projects since its original colonization in the 17th century. Its rocky shores and overgrown hills host a derelict military fort, vacant hospitals, mysterious graves, and a laundry list of alleged government secrets.

The region’s violent history began in 1675, when English settlers shipped hundreds of Native Americans to the islands in the harbor and left them to fend for themselves on the barren rocks over the harsh winter of 1675–1676. Most of them died of starvation. In World War II, Nazi scientists were smuggled onto Long Island by the federal government as part of Operation Paperclip. In fact, the island is believed to be the inspiration for the novel Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

Most recently, the island housed a shelter for Boston’s homeless, but that was hurriedly closed down in 2014, leaving rows of empty bunks inside the old tuberculosis ward. Citing safety concerns as the reason for the island’s evacuation, Boston’s Mayor Martin J. Walsh closed down the Long Island Bridge and transported every inhabitant to the mainland, turning the island once again into a ghost town.

7Paris’s Hidden Railroad

In 1841, Paris was just wrapping its head around the idea of rail transport. It had recently finished a massive fortification project that ran around the perimeter of the city, and the military was looking for ways to get troops and supplies from the center of the city out to the strongholds. Strapped for cash, they turned to private companies to foot the bill for the railways, which soon radiated from Paris’s center to the outskirts in a star-shaped pattern.

The result was a mess. Each line was operated by a different company, and nary did any two lines connect. Passengers from the perimeter had to travel into the heart of Paris just to catch a different train at a different station that would take them back out to a different point in the perimeter—sometimes just a short distance from their original departure point.

So Paris decided to create the Petite Ceinture, or “little belt.” This line would form a circle just inside the city’s fortified perimeter and connect the other railways. It was a smashing success, and for nearly 100 years, it served as one of the main transport methods in Paris. Then, in the early 20th century, its rails and stations began to see less and less traffic, until it was practically abandoned by 1934.

In the intervening years, the line has remained nearly untouched. It’s now grown over with moss and ivy, and few Parisians even know it exists. Via tunnels, bridges, and man-made gorges, the Petite Ceinture winds and twists through nearly 32 kilometers (20 mi) of modern-day Paris, a hidden natural belt in the midst of urban sprawl.

6Holland Island

Nearly 400 people once called Holland Island home. Mostly fishermen and their families, the island’s occupants carved a living straight from waters of the Chesapeake Bay for centuries. But eventually, the sea stopped giving and started taking.

What was once an 8-kilometer-long (5 mi) island began to recede as erosion ate into the shoreline. Like many of the islands in the Chesapeake Bay, Holland Island is made mostly of silt and clay rather than rock, making it easy prey for the ceaseless force of wind and waves. The last inhabitants fled in 1922, leaving their homes and churches as bleak monuments to the people who once walked the island. Even those slowly fell into the sea.

All but one, that is.

The last house on Holland Island outlived its brethren by years, tenaciously holding its own on a wispy strip of land that goes completely underwater every high tide. It had help—for 15 years, a retired minister dedicated his life to preserving the two-story Victorian by surrounding it with timber, stones, and sandbags in a futile attempt to hold back the sea. Despite his best efforts, though, this strange landmark finally gave up the ghost and collapsed in 2010.

5Russia’s Tesla Towers

Reliable sources of information about these bizarre structures are few and far between. Located in the middle of a Russian forest, they’ve been dubbed “Russian Tesla towers” by most websites on which they’re featured. The towers are actually Marx generators, built to convert a low-voltage direct current into a high-voltage pulse. Systems similar to these Russian behemoths—although on a much smaller scale—are commonly used today to simulate lightning on industrial equipment.

The Russian generator complex was built by the Soviet Union in the ’70s to test insulation for aircraft. When the Iron Curtain lifted in the early ’90s, the rest of the world got their first glimpse of the hidden testing facility, and it’s been in and out of the public eye ever since. Technically, it’s not abandoned, since periodically over the years it’s been put back into temporary use by private research companies.

4California’s Glass Beach

Near Fort Bragg, California, is a secluded beach awash in the bright colors of emeralds, rubies, turquoise, and diamonds. But these aren’t gemstones littering the sand—they’re bits of polished glass from 100 years of dumping in the area. Starting around 1906, the community of Fort Bragg—along with other cities along the coast—took to dumping their garbage straight into the Pacific. While the paper was churned to mush, and the plastic presumably floated to climes distant and unknown, the glass remained.

It wasn’t until 1967 that Fort Bragg put the pinch on ocean dumping, but the seeds of transformation were already sown. Worked for a century by rolling waves and abrasive sand, the razor shards of glass eventually took on rounded edges and washed back up to shore as iridescent glass pebbles. Although glass isn’t a rarity, there are bona fide historic relics strewn along the beach: After World War II, auto companies switched from glass to plastic for the manufacture of taillights, which makes the odd ruby-colored glass pebble something of a collector’s item. However, Glass Beach is now a part of MacKerricher State Park, so it’s illegal to pocket any of the sea glass.

3Angola’s Ghost City

On an isolated swath of countryside a few miles outside of the capital city of Angola is a modern high-rise ghost town. Nova Cidade de Kilamba—usually shortened to just “Kilamba”—contains 2,800 apartments split between 750 high-rise buildings. It was built to house close to half a million people and comes complete with its own schools and retail section.

And it’s almost completely empty.

The miniature city was financed by a Chinese construction company and went from scrub land to completed project in less than three years. But rather than the influx of residents they probably expected, the only life to be seen in the entire 12,000-acre complex are a few Chinese workers (who live off-site) and a scattering of disoriented animals. According to the BBC, the problem is that Angola’s class structure consists of “the very poor and the very rich,” so there’s nobody in the market for a $200,000 apartment.

2The Maunsell Forts

Like metal beasts risen from the murky depths, the Maunsell Forts stand guard at the mouth of the Thames to this day. Although they aren’t quite as useful as they used to be, they serve as silent reminders of our turbulent past.

As the threat of German air raids over Britain in World War II abruptly became reality, the Ministry of Defence commissioned several sea forts to protect the country’s airspace. In addition to four naval forts, the army also built six forts for anti-aircraft defense. Three of these were dropped in the Mersey River, and three were put in the mouth of the Thames estuary. Of the three Thames forts, only two are still around—Red Sands Fort (pictured above) and Shivering Sands Fort.

The forts were decommissioned after the war and abandoned after their guns were removed. Most of them are now derelicts, leftover curiosities from a time of war, although one of the naval forts was later invaded by a lone Englishman, who declared it the newly minted Principality of Sealand.

1The SS Ayrfield

If you swim out past the mangroves of Homebush Bay in Sydney, Australia, and look to the northwest, you’ll see something incredible: the rusted hull of a 100-year-old steamer bursting with its own isolated forest sprouting from its decks like a post-apocalyptic chia pet.

The SS Ayrfield was built in 1911 and put to use as a collier, transporting coal from the mainland to coal-fired ships stationed out at sea. During World War II, the Commonwealth requisitioned the Ayrfield as a cargo ship to get supplies out to Allied troops in the Pacific theater. After the war, it returned to its domestic duties under the care of the Miller Steamship Company until it was retired in 1972 and sent to its grave in Homebush Bay.

For years, Homebush Bay has been the place where ships go to die. In fact, it’s where everything goes to die. From DDT to heavy metals to dioxin, the body of water has served as a chemical dumping ground for decades, choking out the native mangroves and turning a once thriving fishing ground into an industrial mistake.

It’s since been cleaned up to a degree, and now only a few rusted ships are visible above the waterline. The SS Ayrfield is one of the remaining relics of the bay’s turgid past, a poetic reminder that not everything that dies has to stay dead.

Eli Nixon is the author of Son of Tesla, a sci-fi novel about love, friendship, and Nikola Tesla’s army of cyberclones. He also has a Twitter.

Everybody has fantasized about hitting the jackpot at some point in their life. Whether you scour the ocean floor looking for sunken treasure, love sports betting or casinos, or even just play the lottery, everybody harbors a small flicker of hope that one day they can win big and change their lives for the better.

For most people, this payday and level of wealth will always remain an unattainable dream that few people are willing to invest time or money into achieving. But for the incredibly lucky few, great fortunes are still out there, just waiting to be discovered.

With that in mind, here are 10 examples of ordinary people who made astonishing discoveries that made them millions of dollars overnight.

Related: 10 Inspirational Rags-To-Riches Stories

10 Hand of Faith Gold Nugget, Australia: $1 Million

In the fall of 1980, Kevin Hillier and his family were traveling up and down the Australian coast in a van searching for work opportunities. Hillier had been making ends meet by doing odd jobs. However, after suffering a back injury, doctors had told him to cut back on the physical labor but to go walking to aid his recovery, which directly led to his interest in metal detecting.

Hillier’s wife often prayed they would discover their fortune through their newfound hobby, and Hillier once dreamed that he found a gold nugget that couldn’t be removed from the soil. But the family continued to struggle until one day in September 1980 when, outside his small hometown of Wedderburn, Victoria, Hiller’s dream became an unbelievable reality.

While out walking with his metal detector, Hillier really did discover a gold nugget that couldn’t (initially) be pulled from the ground. After many hours of careful digging, he managed to extract a gold nugget that weighed about 27.6kg (61 lbs.) which he sold in February 1981 to the Gold Nugget Casino in Las Vegas for over $1 million, where it remains the largest gold nugget on display anywhere in the world.^[1]

9 Heade’s “Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth,” Indiana: $1.25 Million

In January of 1999, an unnamed man was playing a board game about fine art titled Masterpiece when he recognized a picture that was painted in a similar style to a painting he had bought to cover a hole in the wall of his Indiana home. Intrigued, he searched the internet until he came across information from the Kennedy Galleries in New York regarding the work of an American artist named Martin Johnson Heade.

After sending some pictures and a description of the painting in his home to experts at the gallery, the owner was shocked to learn that his acquisition was actually a lost work by Heade. The piece was still in its original frame, and it was in remarkable condition, considering it was painted in the 1890s.

Heade’s “Magnolias On Gold Velvet Cloth”—as the painting was titled—was eventually purchased by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts for more than $1 million after the board of trustees managed to raise the funds in a meeting that lasted less than 90 minutes.^[2]

But don’t be discouraged, reportedly, there are many more lost or forgotten—and valuable—paintings just waiting to be found at your neighborhood thrift store, flea market, or rummage sale.

8 Declaration Of Independence, Pennsylvania: $2.42 Million

The Declaration of Independence is considered by many Americans to be the most important document in the nation’s history. After the original was created, 200 “first edition” copies were made by John Dunlap ‘ were made so the message of the Declaration could be carried across the nation. Of the 26 copies known to survive, only three of them are currently in the hands of private collectors.

One such copy was discovered behind a painting that a collector only bought because he liked the frame. Upon disassembling the frame, the unidentified owner found an “unspeakably fresh” first edition copy of the Declaration Of Independence folded up behind the picture.

An excited friend encouraged the owner to contact Sotheby’s to get it appraised and eventually it sold for $2.42 million at auction in 1991, with the price reflecting the unique nature of this discovery and the remarkable condition it was in. That same copy was auctioned by the 1991 auction wiiner again in 2000, bringing in $8 million.^[3]

7 Hoxne Hoard, UK: $2.5 Million

In November 1992, a farmer was working his fields in Suffolk, England, when he realized that he had lost his hammer. Knowing it could take years to search for it alone and not willing to give it up as lost and buy a new one, he asked his friend Eric Lawes to bring his metal detector over and attempt to locate his missing tool.

Not long into the search, Eric picked up a signal, so he began digging in the soil where his reading was strongest. It quickly became apparent that he had not found the hammer but had instead stumbled across something much more exciting. After digging up a few shovels full of gold and silver coins, Eric quickly contacted police and local archeologists to inform them of his discovery. The very next day, a team of experts excavated the entire chunk of earth containing the coins so that they could be examined and extracted under laboratory conditions. It was only when the experts began the lab work that they realized the significance of Eric’s discovery.

Overall, Eric had found about 27 kilograms (60 pounds) of gold and silver objects, including over 15,000 coins that dated from the Roman occupation of Great Britain. Mr. Lawes received over $2.5 million from the British government as compensation for his remarkable discovery, which he split evenly with the landowner, who eventually found the hammer which had sparked the initial search.^[4]

6 The Royal One, Black Opal, Australia: $3 Million

In 1999, a man known only as Bobby decided to sell all of his equipment and retire from an opal mining career that had lasted more than 20 years. Bobby lived in Lightning Ridge, a small mining community in New South Wales, Australia, and he found the stone in the very last bucket that had been mined.

Bobby worked carefully for months to reveal the beautiful opal, which he eventually named the Royal One. For reasons known only to him, Bobby inexplicably kept it under his bed (or in a kangaroo skin pouch around his neck) for more than 14 years despite having the expertise to know just how potentially valuable it was.

Eventually it was auctioned off in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2013, and the Royal One—a 306-carat high quality black opal—netted Bobby over $3 million.^[5]

5 Tanzanite Stones, Tanzania: $3.4 Million

Tanzanite is an incredibly rare mineral that can only be found in one place on earth, the African nation of Tanzania, from which the gem gets its name. The rarity of tanzanite makes it extremely valuable, and mining this gem provides a valuable source of income for many budding entrepreneurs and treasure hunters in the country.

Out of all the people who spend their lives searching for tanzanite, Saniniu Laizer must be considered the luckiest. In June 2020, his mining operation in Tanzania recovered the two largest examples of the mineral ever recorded, weighing 9.3 kilograms (20 pounds) and 5.1 kilograms (11 pounds), which he sold to the Tanzanian government for more than $3.4 million.

Amazingly, Laizer wasn’t ready to retire with his new fortune. Just two months later, in August 2020, reports suggest that he found another huge piece of Tanzanite weighing 5.3 kilograms (14 pounds), worth an estimated $2 million.

Laizer has 30 children to care for, but he still promises to build a school and a medical center with his newfound wealth in an attempt to help all the people who live in his impoverished community.^[6]

4 Crosby Garrett Roman Helmet, Cumbria UK: $3.6 Million

In the UK, important archeological finds must be reported to the relevant authorities upon discovery. Certain valuable metals such as gold and silver are not permitted for private sale, so just like the previously mentioned Hoxne Hoard, a “finder’s fee” is paid to anyone who discovers and reports valuable historical artifacts. The finds are then acquired by local museums, where they can be studied and viewed by the public.

The next item, however, wasn’t covered by these laws as it was made from bronze, which is only considered treasure if it is part of a hoard. Since this object was discovered on its own, it could be sold privately, which was great news for the pockets of the unnamed person who found it!

The artifact in question is a bronze, ceremonial Roman cavalry helmet in unbelievable condition for its age. It was discovered by an amateur metal detectorist on a Cumbrian farm in the UK in May 2010. It’s one of only three Roman helmets to be found in Britain with a complete facemask. Because of its rarity and the fact it could be purchased by anybody, the helmet eventually sold for $3.6 million, which was paid by a private collector at an auction in October 2010.^[7]

3 Staffordshire Hoard, UK: $4.3 Million

An amateur metal detectorist named Terry was searching a field in Lichfield, England, in July 2009 when he came across an area with a uniquely strong signal. Almost immediately after breaking the surface of the ground, the man knew he had discovered something special as he started to uncover an astonishing stash of gold, weapons, and ornaments that had lain undisturbed beneath the surface for over 1,300 years.

What has become known as “The Staffordshire Hoard” was essentially a “war hoard” dating from 600–650, which was an especially turbulent period of England’s history. Experts believe that the items were captured in battle by armies from the kingdom of Mercia, which was at war with the neighboring regions of Northumbria and East Anglia at the time. Although, how it came to be buried in a field far from any known buildings or roads, we will probably never know.

The hoard was purchased by the Birmingham Museum for more than $4.3 million and is still available for the public to view. The money was split evenly between metal detectorist Terry Herbert and landowner Fred Johnson.^[8]

2 “Christ Mocked” By Cimabue, France: $26.8 Million

This story is remarkably similar to that of Heade’s “Magnolias on Golden Gold Velvet Cloth,” which originally covered a hole in a wall. However, this painting, “Christ Mocked” by Cimabue, hung over a stovetop in a French farmhouse for decades. Thought to be a Russian religious relic, the paint was darkened by the stove’s heat, and the whole thing was covered in dirt and grease. This tiny masterpiece was eventually discovered in September 2019 by an auctioneer categorizing the belongings of the elderly owner who was moving out of the old house and into a retirement home.

Upon closer inspection and after some cleaning, it was realized that this was one of only 11 known paintings created by the Italian artist Cimabue. The painting was put up for auction. It was purchased by two U.S.-based collectors who specialized in Italian Renaissance art, but the French government imposed a 30-month ban on the export of the painting with the hope that it could quickly raise enough money to buy it so that the painting could remain in France and eventually be displayed in the Louvre.^[9]

1 The Third Imperial Easter Egg by Fabergé, USA: Roughly $33 Million

The Russian Revolution is famous for many things: the eventual rise of communism, the demise of the Romanov royal family (the last monarchs in Russian history), and the confiscation and eventual sale of numerous golden bejeweled eggs created by the master artist, Peter Carl Fabergé, by the incoming regime.

Fabergé eggs not only hold remarkable value because of the cost of materials used in their creation and their fabulous designs but also because they are the last remaining relics of a royal family and a way of life that no longer exists in Russia today.

You would think that with their incredible notoriety, Fabergé eggs would be quite easy to identify and locate, but due to the secretive nature of Stalin’s sales of the eggs to private buyers in Western countries, eight of the Imperial eggs created for members of the Russian royal family are still missing today.

So when a man from the midwest happened across the Third Imperial Easter Egg at a jumble sale, the intention behind him spending $14,000 on acquiring this unique piece of art was not based on knowledge of art or Russian history, but from a desire to melt it down and profit from the raw materials that the egg consisted of. Upon appraisal, however, the unnamed man realized that he had paid more than the egg’s gold and jewels were worth, and he was worried that he had made a colossal error that would cost him a lot of money.

In desperation, the man searched the words “egg” and “Vacheron Constantin” (the words engraved around the clock) into Google and stumbled across an article in a British newspaper.

To the scrap metal dealer’s astonishment, the egg he thought would lose him money was actually worth something in the region of $33 million, and in 2014, the egg was purchased by a private collector for an unknown price.^[10]