Lost and found

A Barcelona Family are so fond of a painting of two boats moored close to the shore that they always take it on holiday with them. It’s such a part of the family. They don’t even bother to cover it in bubble wrap or a blanket. So there it was propped against the wall when they absentmindedly drove off without loading it into the car. A Spanish tourist from Murcia was drawn to the striking gold frame, and thinking the painting had been discarded, took it home with him. Once he started looking up the artist online he realized that Joaquin Sorolla is a famous Spanish post, impressionist artist and that his paintings are really rather valuable. Meanwhile, the family in Barcelona were frantically leaving painting missing posters, asking for the return of the picture because of its sentimental value. An auction house put the frame lover from Murcia in contact with the absent minded family from Barcelona, and the painting was swiftly returned to its rightful home. There are many stories of valuable items discarded in error or by mistake, usually into skips. A 1939 Vincent HRD series-A Rapide motorcycle recovered from a skip sold for a quarter of £1,000,000; old Marvel comics from the 1960s and 70s found in a Brighton Skip were worse over £20,000; an album of sepia photographs of Tower Bridge under construction in the 1890s is a priceless historical document that was also rescued from a skip; there is also the heartwarming story of £1500 found, rolled up in an old shoe, which was returned to the daughter of the old lady who banked in a shoe. No list of valuable skip finds can be complete without mentioning the hundred million pound haul of stolen paintings dumped in a skip by thieves who lost their nerve or of the Anish Kapoor sculpture mistakenly thrown into a skip by workmen. Who knows how many treasures have ended up in landfill or an incinerator? Nevertheless, we can be cheered by all these good luck stories and many more like them.