Have you ever lost something on vacation? We go out of our way to try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but sometimes it does. Usually, it’s something that’s not that important, like a piece of clothing we forgot to pack or our toothbrush that we left behind in a hotel bathroom. Yet, sometimes people lose much more important things when they’re traveling.

A British man named Paul Bishop was on vacation in Spain back in 2011. He was out drinking with a friend, and he had a little bit more than he could handle. 

Bishop told BBC North West Tonight, “I had downed the rest of my cider and it decided to come back up. The bin was the closest thing to me.”

When his drink of choice wouldn’t stay down, he vomited in a trash bin. He didn’t think much of it, and he was actually ready to proceed to the next bar afterwards. That’s when his friend noticed something was different.

Bishop remembers, “When we headed to the next bar, my friend then turned round to me and asked where my teeth were.”

He had lost his false teeth in the trash bin when he threw up. He hadn’t noticed that they had come out, but now that he realized it, he obviously wanted to find them.

Bishop searched through the trash, but he didn’t see them anywhere. Eventually, he had to give up looking for them and accept the fact that they were gone forever.

But were they?

Eleven years later, Bishop received something very unusual and completely unexpected in the mail – the false teeth he lost in the trash bin back in 2011. When he saw them, his first thought was that “someone was playing a prank.” After all, how could this be possible?

But it was.

It turns out that Bishop’s teeth were discovered in a landfill. The people working at the landfill passed the teeth on to the authorities who were able to use the teeth to find Bishop’s DNA. Bishop explained, “Next thing you know, they have found my DNA and address from British records, and popped it in the post.”

Bishop still thinks being reunited with his teeth after so many years is “unbelievable.” He joked, “Everyone knows about my famous teeth… I am going to have to open a Stalybridge teeth museum!”

What’s the most valuable thing you ever lost on vacation? Have you ever been unexpectedly reunited with something you lost? How would you react if you were reunited with something you lost years ago?