The Portugal Barn Find Story

We’ve all dreamt of making an unusual find to give a profit windfall, from jewellery to antiques, automobiles or any other collectable, and the Portugal barn find story is one which will likely excite your inner hoarder. The story has attained legendary status on the internet as the “Portugal barn find” but since it first emerged, there have been some updates – we’ll tell you the full story in this article now.

The original story behind the barn was that it was bought by a wealthy American along with a plot of land and a wine house out in Portugal. As it turned out, the barn itself was to be the surprising part of the investment, the doors were welded shut and it wasn’t thought to hold anything. It was assumed there was nothing of value inside and so was thrown in as part of the sale.

Upon opening the doors to the barn they discovered that it was stuffed full of classic cars, some of which date back to the 1950s and were from different manufacturers and different countries. Pictures of these cars surfaced online and the story began to spread about the amazing find.

This isn’t quite the truth of the story, but the truth is almost as amazing, save for a lack of the dream find. The barn is in fact real but it was never bought and there was no one crazy enough to sell the barn in the first place.

The barn was actually the property of one man and has been in his possession for a long time. He is a collector of cars and simply filled the barn until he could fit no more in; the pictures emerged after he had a photographer come to help him to create an inventory. It’s not known what the true reason for his collecting is, but rumour has it that people gave him their cars or sold them to him after the Carnation Revolution in the ‘70s so that they could be stashed away.

It’s thought the barn contains around 180 classic cars altogether, although none of them are for sale and the location of the barn is kept a secret. Clearly there is something to be said for keeping your things stored away long enough – you never know what will be valuable in the future!

We aren’t all lucky enough to have a barn filled with valuable classic cars, but you can still make use of self-storage for anything you want to hoard. De-clutter your home and who knows, you might just have something valuable on your hands later down the line.