A sapphire ring found wrapped in a supermarket carrier bag and old socks at a deceased grandmother’s home and almost thrown in the bin has been sold at auction for £11,000. Margaret Hood had a secret treasure trove of rare jewellery hidden in her home, which was discovered after she died last October aged 90.
The pensioner kept the antique items hidden from relatives and carers and they were only discovered when her family began clearing out her possessions. Margaret’s son and daughter said they were stunned to discover a lifetime’s worth of possessions scattered around the house in Littleover, Derby.
The ring was wrapped tightly in a Sainsbury’s supermarket carrier bag, wrapped in socks and left hanging on a porch hook by the door. And as they continued to search the house, they found a cache of jewellery so valuable it was dubbed ‘The Littleover Hoard’.
Some of the great-grandmother’s incredible collection had already been sold at auction for £5,410, while the remaining items sold for £32,300 to online bidders on Monday (27 March). The ring sold for £11,000, a pearl necklace for £14,500 and a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings for £6,800 – bringing the total price of the haul to £37,710.
Margaret’s daughter Sue Bird, 66, and son Jonathan Hood, 56, said after the sale: “We are just delighted. We are so happy with how the sale went – it was very exciting”. Sue then explained how they had no idea of their mother’s secret hoard.
She said: “We didn’t know that Mum had all this jewellery. She never told us and it was only by chance that we found it all. We knew she had inherited some jewellery from an old family friend a few decades earlier, but we had no idea how much.”She never showed it to me or my brother and we were stunned when we discovered all these boxes. Once we realised the scale of it, we started going through everything with a fine-tooth comb.
“The sapphire ring was in an orange Sainsbury’s bag, wrapped in a big green walking sock in another bag and then wrapped in five Pop socks. It was hanging on the wall by the door and we’d all been coming and going, completely unaware that this stunning ring was literally hidden in plain sight.
“It was only after we discovered the ring that we had to say ‘right, don’t throw anything away’. Mum was a lovely lady but I have to admit she was the biggest hoarder – she didn’t throw anything away and as the dementia set in she started hiding things around the house.”
Sue said her late mother “saved everything, even every plastic bag” – after she died we found 316 plastic bags full of greetings cards. She added: “We knew she had a safe because we’d had a glimpse of it many years ago, but of course we didn’t know where the key was.
“We searched and searched and finally found it hidden in the CD shelf behind 300 CDs. When we finally opened the safe, we found many more treasures, including the sapphire earrings and the empty box for the sapphire ring.
