A TREASURE hunter bought a dilapidated hoarder’s home packed to the rafters with a century of stuff – and stumbled on a goldmine.
Alex Archbold and his wife Melissa took a gamble on The Potters House, which was due for demolition, unsure what they would find inside.
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Alex could barely move inside for the plastic bags and cardboard boxes of old clothes, books and decades worth of junk piled in every room.
It turned out to be the former home of a renowned ceramics artist Mary Borgstrom, and some of her artworks were among the treasures he found.
There was also money, rare coins, antique furniture, a piano, jewellery and other valuable items that he was able to sell.
And after months sifting through it all, he also found the four-bed house was structurally sound and did not need to be bulldozed.
Instead he has refurbished it from top to bottom and is now putting it up for auction in Provost, Canada.
Alex paid just £12,000 for the house and its contents in 2019, and could pocket up to £350,000 profit after the final sale.
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He said: “It was the best investment I ever made.”
About half of that total is from the stuff inside the house.
One of his most exciting finds was a rare 2,000-year-old Peruvian jug.
In total there were 180 pieces of pottery – some made by Borgstrom and some she collected – and many sold for over £1,000 each.
And to acknowledge the artists’s legacy, he split the £36,000 proceeds from one auction with her family.
Treasure hunter
Alex quit his job as a Apple Store manager in 2016 to open an antiques shop with his wife in Edmonton called Curiosity Inc.
He has since grown a huge following on YouTube showing off the quirky things he finds.
It was one of his loyal customers who tipped him off about The Potters House, a two hour drive away.
He discovered it used to belong to Borgstrom, a famous potter and adventurer, who became a recluse in old age and developed a hoarding disorder.
“People in the town thought she was the eccentric lady that went out to yard sales and bought things until her car was completely full,” Alex told Finance101.
Her children considered burning all her stuff and bulldozing the house to sell the plot.
Alex was allowed to peek inside to see if he could save any family heirlooms.
He decided to buy the whole house and never looked back.
Alex’s YouTube series on what he found inside and the refurbishment has racked up more than six million views – earning him thousands in ad revenue.
It was also his best marketing tool as he could sell the items online as well as in his shop.
“At one point, whenever I put a video up of me searching through the house, I had this overwhelming response — an overwhelming amount of emails…of people wanting to buy things that they saw that I found in the house,” he said.
Amazingly it is the second time Alex has struck gold, after another hoarder house he bought for £7,000 contained £300,000 of treasure.
That house belonged to an eccentric piano teacher who turned out to be a secret millionaire.
Jewels, bags of money, designer clothes, furs and a solid silver bar were among the treasures he uncovered.
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