story that deserves to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. er north, good night. >> was he a lifelong hoarder or a shrewd collector? the answer lies inside this salvage yard filled with rusty old cars. >> did you know how many cars grandpa had? >> the locals say it's a worthless eyesore. >> whoo-hoo! >> his grandson calls it an "iron gold mine." [ auctioneer calling ] which is the truth? we're about to find out. >> sold it! [ door creaks ] [ wind howls ] [ thunder rumbles ] [ bird caws ] >> i'm jamie colby, and i'm just driving in to enid, oklahoma, which is about 90 miles north of oklahoma city.

population -- roughly 50,000. right here in enid, they have the third largest storage capacity for grain on the planet. but wedged in between enid's silos lies the tale of a cantankerous legend who left his grandchildren with a very strange inheritance. >> my name is stuart piontek, and in 2003, my brothers and sisters and i inherited something pretty unusual from my grandfather. his name was oliver jordan, and he died at 95. he was a child of the dust bowl. grandpa would hold on to just about everything that passed through his life, whether it was a tin can, an automobile, a piece of copper wire. >> and oliver jordan kept it all here. for 60 years. this salvage lot was his home, his sanctuary, his fort knox. hi, stuart! >> welcome to paradise. >> i found it! the rusted old cars in this shed -- some of them relics of the roaring '20s -- are a few of

the more than 200 that jordan accumulated over his lifetime. born in 1908, jordan was raised on a wheat farm. but his real interest was that fabulous new invention, the car. >> grandpa was around machinery all the time, and automobiles were just beginning to happen. he got interested, and it was just a lifelong passion. >> jordan grows up, gets married, and then, at 34 years old, abandons his wife and three young kids for a 16-year-old girl in town. >> when my mother and her brother and sister were still children, my grandfather left the family for another woman. her name was ruby, and that was quite a scandal. everybody was hurt by it. >> in 1946, oliver buys a salvage yard in enid, where he and ruby live, and where he makes money selling old cars and parts. oliver runs the salvage yard successfully for seven years.

but then in 1953, he gets into a nasty argument with the town of enid over zoning and regulations -- two words he detests. >> the city came in and told him he had to put in a bathroom and do some other things, and grandpa just didn't like to be told what to do. >> he was just not a rule follower. >> yeah, he was like, "then fine. i'll close the doors." and that's what he did. >> oliver continues to hoard old cars. he cuts himself off from most of his family and rarely lets another soul inside the shuttered salvage yard. >> pretty much everybody in this town would drive by grandpa's property and see all these old cars sitting right there. and some people -- they thought they were an eye sore, you know. >> enid native brad waken recalls venturing over to the old man's place as a very young car buff in the 1970s. >> i walked across the street. it was, "mr. jordan, i'm looking for a starter for a continental six-cylinder engine. do you have one?" well, after a long pause he

basically said, "well, it's gonna be $50." well, came back about a month later with my $50. he said, "nope. $75." [ chuckles ] i learned a little bit of horse trading at that point in time. >> as a boy, stuart never gets to know grandpa oliver. stuart's mom, oliver's daughter, dies when stuart is only six -- a tragedy that separates him further from his grandfather. >> we would come to town to visit my grandfather, and grandpa had all these cars out in front of his property. it's like a little boy's wonderland. and he had them protected with a fence and with big mean dogs. we couldn't get past the dogs. >> did you ever wish that he spent more time with you? >> you know -- >> were you curious about him? >> yeah, i was eager for the opportunity to get to know him. >> after his mother's death, stuart and his family move away. when stuart graduates high

school in 1984, he decides to take a summer road trip back to enid. >> i got a greyhound bus ticket and went out to enid on my own. he took me over to his shop, and for the first time, i got to spend some time with my grandfather. >> and with all those cars. sure, they look like heaps of scrap, but stuart comes to understand this was his grandfather's pride and joy, his collection. its centerpiece -- these two depression-era cords. >> grandpa had a fascination with the cord, because it was the first car that had front-wheel drive, and they had done some really ingenious things under the hood. >> after his high school road trip, stuart heads out west for college and then launches a successful furniture business in san francisco. then, in the fall of 2000, a call from out of the blue sends stuart scrambling back to enid. >> he opens the door [chuckles] and he's covered from head to toe in feathers.

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>> so, what was the lowest priced mass-produced american car? it's "b," the 1925 ford model t runabout. at $260, it sold for $5 less than the 1924 model. ♪ >> for half a century, cantankerous junkyard owner oliver jordan accumulates hundreds of old cars, some very rare and mostly intact, but all of them rusting as he grows old. then, in the fall of 2000, his grandson stuart gets a phone call that opens the door to a new relationship and to a strange inheritance. >> ruby, his companion of 60 years, had fallen off a ladder and broken her hip, and she was in the hospital. she called worried about grandpa, because he was back at the house and he was 94 years old. and that was the open door. >> and it took till his 90s, really.

>> yeah, because of who he was. he didn't want to need anybody. >> stuart hops on a plane to oklahoma, not knowing what to expect. >> so, here i knock on the door. he's 6'4", and even at 94, he has got quite a commanding presence. and he opens the door [chuckles] and he's covered from head to toe in feathers. he and ruby had a couple of dogs, and one of the dogs had torn up the feather bed. there was something about him that still just commanded respect, even covered in feathers. >> seeing oliver in such a terrible state, stuart decides to stay in oklahoma for a while and take care of his grandfather. >> i was getting to know my grandfather through these cars. he was so proud to be showing them to me and me experiencing his life's work and his pride and joy. >> to stuart, two things become immediately clear. first, oliver knows he doesn't have much time left. and second, he's worried about the fate of those cars. >> at one point, he said, "thank god for you. thank god for you." and i think he was so worried

about what would happen to his things. >> stuart's no car expert, but he does his homework and confirms that the centerpiece of the whole collection is indeed those cords from the 1930s, the ones he remembers from his high school road trip. what did the last cord sell for? >> i'm not sure, but maybe not more than 400 of these or 500 of these were ever made. >> best-case scenario. >> i'm thinking best-case scenario, restored, is probably $300,000, $350,000 maybe. >> thoughts like that lead stuart down a road that will take him more than a decade to travel and cost him plenty. just for starters, he lays out tens of thousands of dollars to ship in secure containers and build a steel storage building to house the most prized cars. >> it's his life's work, but also if these things are so valuable, why are they just rotting away here, you know? and someone has to step in and do something about it. >> in august 2003, oliver jordan

dies at the age of 95, leaving his enormous automobile collection to stuart and his siblings. >> the original windows that they would stick in the sides... >> stuart tells me this 1924 rollin touring car is one of his personal favorites. the model was popular among bootleggers during prohibition. >> so, there's toggle switches on the dashboard where they would turn off the taillights if they were being followed by somebody. >> to hide the booze. >> that's right. >> but these cars represent just a snippet of oliver's vast collection. i've never seen anything like this, stuart. there are so many cars. >> it's quite a strange thing to inherit, isn't it? >> before he dies, oliver gives stuart some business advice. >> he said, "now, don't sell all of those cars and parts all at once. you sell them one at a time." 'cause you'd make more money that way. >> but after trying to sell a couple online, stuart realizes it would take the rest of his life to sell them one-by-one. turns out just getting the titles for all these old cars

takes months. >> you had to get title to every single one of these cars? they're from the '30s. how do you that? >> let me show you. >> first, you have to find the cars' i.d. numbers. >> oh, my god. you can still read it! >> well, we had to polish it off. but we were able to actually get titles for the majority of the cars. >> the years click by like odometer miles. and stuart keeps spending more to authenticate and protect the old cars. a lot of plane trips from san francisco and back, too. by 2013, he says, he's invested $400,000 getting the collection primed for auction. ready or not, it's time to sell. >> hey, jamie. >> hi. how are you, yvette? stuart contacts auctioneer yvette vanderbrink to appraise the collection. so, is stuart sitting on a pile of junk or a potential gold mine? >> there's about 220 of them. they're mostly american cars,

and they're pre-war, which is pre-1942. very rare cars, 'cause at the start of world war ii, they started limiting production. and you could only get one from a ration coupon. >> stuart and yvette make plans for a one-day auction right here on the salvage lot. word begins to spread about oliver jordan's old treasures. stuart soon learns that's not altogether a good thing. >> we arrived at the property and found someone had cut through the fence and then cut a hole in the side of this building the size of a human body, and they stole over 250 antique radiators, tons of chrome parts, a lot of nice stuff. >> the antique radiators alone are worth nearly $40,000. but the biggest loss for stuart is the theft of oliver's rare and beloved 1904 harley-davidson, possibly worth several hundred thousand dollars. >> so, it really set us back, and we had to hire additional security and we had to move the auction forward.

>> that entails some word-of-mouth advertising by him and some seat-of-the-pants hot-rodding by me. you have this thing insured? >> yes, i do. >> oh, good thing, because there's a tree right there. that's next. [ tires squeal ] >> here's another quiz question for you. the answer when we return. what started as a passion

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>> so, which of these deceased celebrity's cars sold for the highest bid at auction? it's the actor steve mcqueen. in 2013, his ford gt40 sold for $11 million.

>> stuart piontek is racing to auction off his strange inheritance -- hundreds of vintage cars. his grandfather's lifelong obsession has become stuart's own. he's invested 13 years and $400,000 in the collection. ♪ i catch up with him at the hot rod association rally in oklahoma city. >> hi, my name is stuart. did you know my grandfather? >> while stuart works the crowd, i'm gonna see if i can get behind the wheel of one of these souped-up automobiles. >> how are you doing? hey, i'm jamie. >> hello, jamie. >> how are you? >> hello, i'm steven. >> tell me about this car. >> well it's a '37 chevrolet, so it's 77 years old. so, i've had it quite a bit of it's life. >> part of the family. >> yes, it is. >> oh, my. i've just gotten the keys. >> we can do that. >> let's go. >> all right. >> you have this thing insured? >> yes, i do. >> oh, good thing, because there's a tree right there.

>> all right. hold on. whoo-hoo! now we're talking! [ tires screech ] this would work for me in new york. auctioneer yvette vanderbrink is here, too. so, yvette, you know, you see these shiny red cars, and, i mean, you can tell there must be some value here. but some of them look like junk. but they're not? >> no. they're not junk. you know, it's a different trend in the car-collecting hobby now. >> that trend is called patina. it refers to the factory-original paint that shows the ravages of time. some car collectors relish that vintage, barn-find look and spray a clear coat of varnish on top to preserve it. that could be good news for the rarest cars stuart has -- those two cords from the 1930s. but if you're like me, you're wondering what they might look like restored. i didn't have to go far to find

out. remember brad waken, who once tried to buy a starter from old oliver jordan? he's now a cord aficionado. he's spent over 30 years restoring this cord. it's a stunning example of what a cord looks like in all its glory. >> we went through the engine, we painted it, we fixed the interior. it's something that we looked at restoring history and not just putting on a nice paint job and chroming everything. [ indistinct p.a. announcement ] [ auctioneer calling ] >> on june 7, 2014, it's finally the big day of the auction. >> we're gonna have fun and we're gonna book and i just killed 10 minutes. >> auctioneer yvette vanderbrink welcomes a crowd of at least 300 people. >> hope i covered everything for you. all right? >> stuart's sister starla crosses her fingers. >> it's been a lot of hard work. i hope that stuart just at least

he gets back what he's put into it and that my other siblings, that what they've put into it, they get back. >> all right, guys! this was one of mr. jordan's favorite vehicles. >> stuart's put in 400 grand. will he get it back? >> $35,000. >> i have $40,000. >> $40,000. >> that's next. today, we're out here with some big news about type 2 diabetes. you have type 2 diabetes, right? yes. so let me ask you this... how does diabetes affect your heart? it doesn't, does it? actually, it does. type 2 diabetes can make you twice as likely to die from a cardiovascular event, like a heart attack or stroke. and with heart disease, your risk is even higher. you didn't know that. no. yeah. but, wait, there's good news for adults who have type 2 diabetes and heart disease. jardiance is the only type 2 diabetes pill with a lifesaving cardiovascular benefit. jardiance is proven to both significantly reduce the chance of dying from a cardiovascular event in adults who have type 2 diabetes and heart disease

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purchase in this game. these cars can go in less than a minute. >> [ calling ] sold it! [ calling ] sold it! sold it! sold it! sold it! $9,600. >> people seem in good spirits, and things seem to moving pretty well, so it's going pretty good. >> stuart's cautiously optimistic as oliver jordan's two beloved cords are about to go up for bid. stuart thinks they'd each be worth six figures if fully restored. but how much in this condition? >> the 1937 cord 812 beverly supercharged. this was one of mr. jordan's favorite vehicles. it's going to need every little piece restored. okay. $35,000. >> i have $40,000. >> $40,000. >> yes! >> now $42,000. [ calling ]

sold it! $42,000. going to new york. >> what will the second cord fetch? >> tara, what do you got? >> i got $20,000. >> $20,000, and we're going. [ calling ] sold it! $22,000. >> it's over in seconds. the same anonymous telephone bidder pays $64,000 for both cars. stuart says he's not disappointed. >> in this condition, that's a great price for them -- as much as we could have hoped for. and it's really great because they're gonna move on. >> after an emotional day, the grand total for this auction -- $540,000. subtract the $400,000 stuart invested and it's a profit of

$140,000 to split with his siblings. add in all that time the family invested in this strange inheritance, and it's no windfall. >> so, here we go. >> whoo-hoo! >> that's a good one. >> all right. >> then again, watching the grandchildren of oliver jordan pop open the bubbly has to make you wonder -- was their 13-year-old enterprise ever really about turning rusted iron into gold? or was it about a different kind of alchemy -- one, perhaps, that restores broken and brittle family ties into strong, lifelong bonds? >> we lost our mother when we were rather young, and we didn't really get to know her parents that well, and so this brought us closer. >> would grandpa -- what would he say? he'd say, "stuart..." >> i think he'd say, "i'm proud of you," you know? >> would that be important for you to hear from your grandfather? >> yeah, definitely. and that's really what it was

about for me -- doing right by him and by my family. >> stuart sold all of his grandpa's cars, and he regretted losing only one -- the 1924 rollin touring car. it was a favorite of prohibition bootleggers, and on auction day, an 86-year-old woman came just to see it. she explained that her grandfather had driven it to the hospital the day she was born and then sold it to oliver jordan. of all the stories about this strange inheritance, this may have been stuart's favorite. so, stuart asked the man that bought the touring car -- for $4,800 -- to let him know if he ever resold it. stuart might want to buy that one back. i'm jamie colby for "strange inheritance." thanks so much for watching, and remember -- you can't take it with you. do you have a strange inheritance story you'd like to

share with us? we'd love to hear it. send me an e-mail or go to our website, strangeinheritance.com. >> a world-famous musician dies and leaves his daughters his prized instrument. >> his love, his treasure, his heart, his voice. >> it's more than 300 years old and could be worth many millions. but this strange inheritance is about more than money. it's about a european countess, a father's legacy, and a huge financial dilemma for his heirs. >> it was very clear to us that he did not want it to be hidden away. [ door creaks ] [ wind howls ] [ thunder rumbles ] [ bird caws ] i'm jamie colby, and i'm on cape cod, massachusetts, heading

to the small town of wellfleet. i'm here to learn about a strange inheritance that shaped a family's life for half a century. >> my name is elena delbanco. in 2011, my sister and i inherited an extraordinary object from our father. this was my father's home for many years. he and my mother built it in 1955. >> elena's father was the virtuoso cellist bernard greenhouse, who died in 2011 at the age of 95. [ classical music plays ] greenhouse spent most of his career playing with the renowned beaux arts trio, which made its debut in 1955 and catapulted to fame. >> he was very warm and very charming but very involved with his work. and he traveled all the time as he became more and more

successful. >> as one of the world's premier cellists, bernard figured he should be playing one of the world's finest cellos. he began searching in europe for an instrument equal to his talent. >> he went to dealers and to instrument shops, and wherever he went, he said, "have you heard any rumors about great cellos?" >> in 1957, he found one in the west german city of aachen. your father came home with something he longed for, searched for. >> i was very young. but i knew that he had found something very important. >> very important, indeed. it was a stradivarius, crafted in italy around 1707 by the master of them all, antonio stradivari. it even has its own aristocratic title, "the countess of stanlein."

sound expensive? it was. >> it was a huge sum of money for us, for our family. and it made a huge difference in our lives to pay it off over many years. >> dealers estimate bernard paid around $100,000, an astronomical sum in the late 1950s, when the average american house sold for $18,000. but for greenhouse, the instrument became a part of him. >> he called it every superlative you could call it -- his love, his treasure, his heart, his voice. >> at the height of his career, greenhouse performed nearly 200 times a year. >> i always wanted to hop in the cello case and travel with my father wherever he was going. >> when greenhouse wasn't in concert, he taught at the manhattan school of music, juilliard, and here at home, in his cape cod studio.

this is where elena also played the cello as a child. you sometimes put your name in his appointment book to try to get time with him in lieu of a lesson, erasing the name of a student that was actually coming. >> i didn't do that to get a cello lesson. i did that to get an hour of his time. >> did you ever play the strad? >> no, never. >> why? >> i never played well enough to play the strad. >> by whose opinion? >> i guess by my father's, but i never wanted to. >> can i hear him play? >> i would love it. [ mid-tempo classical music plays ] having the music is wonderful. it's hard but wonderful. [ music continues ] isn't it beautiful?

>> wow! >> haunting. >> what's the first thing you do when you have to decide whether to keep or sell the family jewel? >> i think the first question you ask yourself is, "do you have any use for or love for the family jewel?" and then, i think a big part of it also is, "can you afford to keep the family jewel?" >> the financial implications of this strange inheritance worry elena and her husband, nicholas, who are both college professors nearing retirement. what would it have entailed to keep the strad? insurance? storage? >> coming up, of course, with the taxes that the government wants. >> did you hear from them? >> no, no, they just said, "let those people keep their inheritance." >> [ laughs ] >> "we have so many other people." yes, of course. >> so, does that weigh in to whether you have to sell something, the fact that you have to pay taxes? >> absolutely.

>> so, what should elena's family do? they decide it's too expensive to keep the strad. they're keenly aware that a successful auction could yield millions -- quite a nice nest egg in retirement. but selling a 300-year-old stradivarius is no small undertaking. >> it's a cutthroat world in the world of musical instruments. we came to understand all kinds of things that could go wrong. >> that's next. >> but first, our "strange inheritance" quiz question... the answer when we return. it's easy to think that all money managers are pretty much the same. but while some push high commission investment products, fisher investments avoids them. some advisers have hidden and layered fees. fisher investments never does. and while some advisers are happy to earn commissions

from you whether you do well or not, fisher investments fees are structured so we do better when you do better. maybe that's why most of our clients come from other money managers. fisher investments. clearly better money management.

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call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. ♪go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. >> when master cellist bernard greenhouse dies at the age of 95, his heirs face a quandary -- what to do with his beloved stradivarius, worth millions of dollars. >> my father, in his will, left the cello to me and to my sister. he left no instructions. he was unable to confront the sale of the cello, and he

preferred to let us figure it out so that he could have it till the very last day of his life. >> i'm in boston to understand how elena and her family deal with their strange inheritance. elena does her homework and decides to sell the strad through chris reuning from reuning & son. chris is a rare-instrument dealer. he's also a cellist and a luthier, someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments. how do you decide what bernard's stradivarius is worth? >> well, i think the first thing, you have to evaluate the quality. and then it also helps to know what the market history has been. so, in the case of this cello, we did know what other stradivari cellos had sold for. and we could compare the quality of this one to those. >> back in 2002, a similar cello sold for $5 million.

but over the past several years, collectors have driven the price of rare instruments way up, and each one has its own history -- a unique story that's a big factor in whether it fetches a 6-, 7-, or even 8-figure price at auction. nobody knows this cello's story better than elena's husband, nicholas delbanco. a novelist by trade, delbanco actually wrote an entire book about the instrument. it's called "the countess of stanlein restored," and it describes the painstaking restoration his father-in-law commissioned for the countess back in the 1990s. >> the wear and tear on such instruments is very high. aside from all the physical stress, there's change in climate, change in temperature, change in humidity. and at a certain point, the cello was almost as weary as he. >> nicholas' book details a harrowing process.

the cello was popped open with a knife and sat in pieces for months while some of its wood was patched. >> bernie got more and more restless and more and more ready to have his heart's darling returned. he said, then, "i will never let it go again," and he never did. >> but he did play the strad for more than another decade, and he let his students play it, too. in the last years of his life, bernard remained so attached to the cello that he slept with it. chris reuning believes every serious bidder will demand proof that the countess has no significant hidden flaws. >> in this case, we actually did a c.t. scan of the cello. >> like a doctor does. >> yes. >> is that unusual? >> we don't do it very often, but in this case there were some questions, if there was a crack. >> chris reuning called me one day here at the shop and said, "john, i've got this cello that i need c.t.-scanned right away." >> chris flies with the strad to

a hospital in minnesota, where experts are ready to diagnose the patient. the worry? vast sums could be wiped from this multimillion-dollar sale if the countess has damage from cracks or, worse, wormholes made inside the cello by tiny larvae. would that equate to thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars? >> another quiz question... the answer in a moment. oh boy. looking for adventure this labor day?

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>> in the fall of 2011, the heirs of bernard greenhouse anxiously await the results of a c.t. scan -- not on a person, but on a 300-year-old stradivari cello, known as the countess of stanlein. millions of dollars are at stake. radiologist steven sirr performed a scan just like this one. >> the diseases that affect the old cellos, they're usually caused by two things. one is cracks. the other abnormality is wormholes carved by larvae, which eat the channels of wood until sometimes there's hardly any original wood left. >> what exactly is happening as it goes through? >> the c.t. scanner produces x-rays, which are high-energy

light beams and very thin sheets. >> this is the actual c.t. scan of the stradivarius. chris shares with me his bottom line. >> this cello has been in constant use since 1800. and it's always been a player's instrument. so, it's been cared for beautifully. but there are cracks. >> whatever tiny cracks there might be, they don't affect the cello's unique sound. chris is able to set the official opening bid for bernard greenhouse's stradivari cello at a cool $6.2 million. there's just one hitch. the delbancos might not accept the highest bid if it's from such rich investor who just wants to lock the countess away in a vault. >> a cello is only half, perhaps not even half, itself if unheard. it had been his expressed desire

and conviction that it be played. >> and you made a decision that the strad was better in the hands of someone who could play it than on the shelf of someone who would pay more for it? >> well, potentially pay more for it, but we just didn't want it on a shelf. >> so, the idea was that they would be able to open the bids, look at all the factors -- the price, who's buying it -- and choose one of those bids. >> chris agrees to this unusual condition. it's not every day you get to sell a 300-year-old stradivarius. so, off he goes with the countess on a world marketing tour. >> all the cellists that i showed it to were completely shocked about the sound. all of them said it was the best cello they'd ever played. >> i had to wonder. is the sound of a strad really so divine? after all, researchers recently

blindfolded professional musicians and had them play violins, mixing historic strads with top new ones. most said they preferred the sound of modern instruments. so, i asked boston symphony orchestra cellist mihail jojatu to play two cellos for me, one modern and one from the 18th century, and not tell me which was which. can you play each one to see if somebody who doesn't know as much as you do can tell the difference? >> sure. my pleasure. >> you listen, too. what do you think? [ playing mid-tempo classical music ] that was spectacular. so, to me, that sounds as good as it gets. >> let's try this one.

>> i have to say that the sound sounded to me richer, deeper. >> you have a good ear. >> really? i'm shocked. >> yes, this is a good-quality, modern cello. it's a couple years old. and this is mihail's cello. this was made in what year? >> in 1780. >> i had one more request. if i were a student of yours, could you teach me to play one note? >> sure. >> chris, would you let me? >> i suppose, yes. >> you suppose? i sense hesitation. >> no, i trust you. [ cello screeching ] >> am i hurting the value of this cello? >> yes. >> [ laughing ] i'm sorry! i better stop. returning to the tale of the countess of stanlein, it isn't long before sealed bids start coming in. in boston, chris sits down with

the delbancos to open them and pick a buyer. what was the emotion in the room when you open the first bid for elena and nicholas to look at? >> you know, there was not a dry eye in the room because this cello was so much part of their life and signified her relationship to her father. >> saying goodbye to the countess of stanlein were more painful than i expected it to be. we all sat down in a little seating group in his office, and we put the cello as part of the seating group, and i began to feel more and more upset, and we just closed the case. and i've never seen it again. >> in the end, the greenhouse heirs accept a bid they feel they cannot refuse. it comes not from a cello virtuoso but from a foreign billionaire. but that's one last twist to this story when we return on "strange inheritance."

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>> eight months after virtuoso cellist bernard greenhouse dies, his heirs accept a secret bid on their stradivari cello. the price? all the auctioneer will say is that it's significantly higher than the $6.2 million opening bid. what's significantly higher than $6.2 million? >> yeah, the reason i'm not disclosing the price is out of respect to the buyer. >> a fair bid to me is 15% to 20% higher. significantly higher is 50% higher. is it between 15% and 50%? >> good try. [ chuckles ] >> okay, so i tried. and the delbancos are keeping it a secret, too. but in the end were they able to honor greenhouse's wish, that the countess be played and not shut away in a vault or museum?

the buyer, it turns out, is a canadian billionaire, jacqueline desmarais. she decides to permanently loan the countess to a 20-year-old canadian virtuoso named stephane tetreault. i've known about bernard greenhouse for years. he's a huge figure in music history. to have the chance to even touch his cello was just an honor. >> after the auction, the delbancos never intended to see the countess again. welcome. >> thank you. >> welcome. but then, we offered them a chance to meet stephane for the first time, at the carriage house recital hall near boston. [ playing mid-tempo classical music ]

as i listen, i can't help but think that if stephane performs as long as greenhouse did, the countess of stanlein will be heard for many decades to come. >> that was lovely. >> bravo. >> so good to hear you play. >> what a pleasure to meet both of you. >> and you. >> really. >> really. that was very beautiful. >> i was quite nervous, actually. >> what a great pleasure. >> pleasure. >> let me just... oh, there she is. >> so, in this tale of music and money, the delbancos seem satisfied that they have found a way to split the difference. more money might have made a difference in your life. how do you walk away from that? >> there's never enough if you

think in those terms. an extra million or six would hardly have mattered. >> i think it was a very special strad, and i think we're really happy with the outcome. >> before we go, i want to share this last thought. you know, years ago, back in the old days, bernard greenhouse and the trio could count on a break from the airlines when they had to fly the cello, allowing bernard to buy a child's ticket at half-price. well, once at the airport, a ticket agent called mr. greenhouse over after seeing the name "cello" on the ticket and said, "mr. greenhouse, how old is your son, cello?" to which bernard laughed, winked, and responded, "250 years old." i'm jamie colby. thanks so much for joining us on "strange inheritance." and don't forget. you can't take it with you. do you have a "strange inheritance" story you'd like to share with us?

we'd love to hear it. send me an e-mail or go to our website, strangeinheritance.com. >> on a cool spring evening in north carolina... [ tires screech, crash ] ...a car crash kills a renowned coin collector. he's carrying the crown jewel of his collection. but is it really one of the rarest and most valuable coins in the world or a clever fake? >> i just imagine she's sitting there saying to me, "they say i'm not real. what do you think?" >> half a century passes before the man's heirs -- and the public -- learn the truth about his precious cargo. >> we sat there on pins and needles, and then the numbers started climbing. [ door creaks ] [ wind howls ] [ thunder rumbles ] [ bird caws ]