30. La Paz County Sheriff Find Underwater Skeleton Tea Party
Location: Colorado River, La Paz, Arizona
Year Discovered: 2015
Est. Value: $50*
La Paz County Sheriff deputies teamed up with the Buckskin Fire Department in Arizona when the former got a call about possible human remains in the Colorado River. A diver went down with a video camera to inspect, and there, he found two skeletons having a tea party.
The skeletons were fake, thankfully, and they were both seated upright in lawn chairs. One even wore aviators and a bib. The other held a sign that said, “Dream in the River” with a date of August 16, 2014. Was this an art installation? Discarded Halloween decorations? Some type of shrine? We may never know.
31. Atari’s “E.T.” Video Games Unearthed from New Mexico Landfill
Location: Alamogordo, New Mexico
Year Discovered: 2014
Est. Value: $5-$10 million*
This story is a shocker with a lot of twists and turns. In the fall of 1983, video game maker Atari realized that its much-maligned E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial video game was a huge flop. So, Atari decided to do something about its excess inventory, and it secretly buried much of the stock in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill.
The “Atari Dump” became the stuff of urban legends, as no one believed that the E.T. game had been that much of a failure. That is, until 2014, when an exploratory dig in Alamogordo revealed that the Atari Dump had been real all along. Atari’s game was so hated that burying millions of copies in the New Mexico desert was the best alternative to trying to sell them.
