Shipping containers are one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, and their utility has only expanded since the development of containerised logistics in the middle of the century.
Whilst primarily still used as a standard storage unit for moving vast quantities of inventory around the world, you can also find a shipping container for sale to be used for converting into a wide variety of functions from restaurants to apartments.
Because of the versatility of the containers, some used containers may still have contents inside, some of which are exceptionally strange. Here are some of the oddest examples.
A Stolen Comic
There are many different valuable comics out there, but the holy grail for collectors is Action Comics #1, a comic that has sold for over £3m and features the debut of Superman, the world’s most famous superhero.
As a result, the comic has been a huge target for both collectors and thieves alike, with a copy infamously being stolen from actor Nicholas Cage in 2000, before emerging over a decade later in a storage container in a story so surreal that a movie about the crime is currently in development.
James Bond’s Lotus Submarine
One of the most famous moments in action film history happens in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, when Roger Moore’s 007 drives into the sea in a Lotus Esprit, only for the car to transform into a submarine to escape.
The only story stranger than this is the real-life story of how the prop Lotus shell ended up in a shipping container that was bought for a very small sum in a rent-delinquent auction, which are typically blind auctions of containers that have not been paid for a long time.
After being restored, “Wet Nellie” ultimately sold for over £600,000 at auction, allegedly to electric car company owner and James Bond fan Elon Musk.