There’s not always gold in them thar hills, and finding an original copy of the U.S. Constitution behind a thrift store painting is more the stuff of legend than reality.

Still, estate sales professionals do unearth hidden gems from time to time:

• Susan Morgan: “I was in a house that was a little rundown and didn’t have much in the way of contents, and then I saw a brown bag on the back porch. It was being used as a door stop. There was a silver ingot in there worth about $1,000.

• Shannon Merritt: “I was in a home where the client had been a deep-sea fisherman. He’d stashed some gold away and also some books on the end of the world. I guess he was preparing for something, and it was pretty cool to come across all that.”

• Jerry Evans: “We once found a 16th-century samurai helmet, advertised it online and sold it to a guy in Brazil. We also once were handling a living estate sale where the client had hidden thousands of dollars in gold jewelry in socks, drawers and closet corners.”

• Lee Anne Patterson: “I found a pair of diamond and emerald earrings that the family had been trying to find for a long time. The lady had pinned them on the back side of a cloth-covered clothes hangar – and we were getting ready to toss them. They were delighted to get those back. I also have found $100 bills stuffed in ladies’ dress gloves, so at my sales we go through everything really, really carefully.”

– Joe Morris