A man has stunned the internet after he discovered 200-year-old liquor stored in a hidden cellar. Now, people are saying the bottles of booze may be worth a pretty penny.
Luca documented the discovery on TikTok, where his videos have gained millions of views since they were posted earlier this month. The shocking story began when Luca and his friend Tom were told there was a cellar in Tom’s 200-year-old house in England, and started cutting a hole into the floorboards. He captioned the clip: “#secretroom”.
After some drilling, the two were able to stick a ladder down the hole into the hidden basement. When they climbed down the ladder, the men looked around and saw a dusty cellar surrounded by bricks and debris. But on one side of the cellar was more than a dozen glass bottles.
As they dusted off one of the empty bottles, it read in embossed text: “Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture”.
The men also held up a full bottle which they believed to be brandy, and another they thought was whiskey dated 1887.
“It looks like there’s some sort of ancient party going on down here,” one of them joked.
It seemed the bottles must’ve been stored in the hidden cellar for quite some time, considering one of the men started gagging when he smelled the mysterious green liquid.
Other discoveries beneath the 200-year-old house included an old pair of boots and a possible entryway to another hidden compartment.
The hidden cellar shocked many viewers, with thousands of commenters saying the old bottles may be worth quite a bit of money.
“Those bottles are probably valuable,” one person commented.
“Do your research before selling anything! Lots of bottle collectors out there! Amazing find!” another user said.
One TikToker claimed the bottles labelled Clarke’s World Famed are “worth about $200 EACH,” while someone else wrote: “That blood mixture bottle goes for like $200 alone”.
As it turns out, Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture was a medicine concocted by Francis Jonathan Clarke, a three-time mayor of Lincoln, England. According to Lincolnshire Life, Clarke was born in 1842 and set up his own chemist business in 1859 at 17 years old.
His “blood mixture” claimed to be a medicinal “cure-all” for various complaints, including sores, scurvy, cancerous ulcers, rheumatism, gout, sore eyes, pimples, blackheads and piles. Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture grew in popularity in the 1860s and was advertised as “The Finest Blood Purifier that Science and Medical Skill have brought to Light”.
However, an investigation from The British Medical Association in 1909 found that its contents were mainly water, a little sugar, a small amount of alcohol and traces of chloroform and ammonia.
On Ebay, empty bottles of Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture go for $10 (£8.35) to $170 (£141.95).
While one TikTok user commented on Luca’s video of the hidden cellar, “That’s hidden history,” one person simply said: “New man cave.”
