A man who accidentally happened across original sheet music written by Ludwig van Beethoven has seen the document auctioned for $100,000.
Appraiser Brendan Ryan was visiting the home of a woman in Greenwich, Connecticut o value several items that she wanted to sell, when he spotted handwriting that looked familiar.
Having been obsessed with Beethoven in his younger years, he recognised it as belonging to one of music's most famous composers and sure enough, it was authenticated and believed to have been taken from a sketchbook dating back to 1810.
Full pages taken from such sketchbooks are extremely rare, so when it went to auction last month, it sold to a German antiques dealer for $100,000.
The woman who unwittingly owned the manuscript was unsurprisingly said to be "very happy".
Let's hope she gave the man who discovered it a finder's fee...
