Bob Marley is known all over the world, and many people have heard his famous hits at least once in their lifetime, no matter their age and generation. This Maltese man, however, has found his 15 minutes of fame in connection with the Marley name, thanks to the discovery of a number of old rotting tapes in a London hotel basement. What are the odds?!

Two years ago, Joe Gatt, who has lived in the UK since 1971, received a call from a friend who worked for a cleaning company, informing him that he had found some discarded and severely damaged Bob Marley tapes in a waterlogged basement.

Mr Gatt, already a huge Marley fan, immediately knew they had found treasure, and what was specifically known as ‘the lost masters’ in the music industry. These masters featured 24-track tapes of previously-unheard recordings of the reggae superstar’s greatest songs, recorded live at the Lyceum and Rainbow in London and the Pavilion in Paris back in the 1970s.

The tapes were seemingly beyond repair. “There were fragments falling off the reel and white gunge on them,” he told the Times of Malta. His friend, Louis Hoover, found Martin Nicholas, a sound technician specialist who helped restore the tapes to their former glory. “We weren’t expecting much. We thought it would be all crackling. But we heard them, and we couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Now, it’s time for the restored tapes to find a good home. The records will be sold in three lots by Liverpool auction company Omega, which is estimating these gems to sell at £25,000 per lot (€29,000). And some fans are saying they’re worth much more than that!

How incredible is this?