A man who discovered that a family home in Brigus had been ransacked later found stolen valuable heirlooms at a nearby flea market.

Jim Hearn's family had collected materials over the last 200 years of living in the same home in the Conception Bay community.

"We had about five generations of Hearns who kept everything," said Hearn, who is still reeling from a break-in in August in which the house was ransacked from top to bottom.

"They simply pulled out every drawer and every trunk that was here, just dumped it on the floor, and went through it and picked out what they wanted," said Hearn, describing destruction in his parents' old bedroom.

"You can see the devastation here is just unbelievable. Really, they didn't have to do this, to rob the place."

One of the items stolen was the chalice used in the first known mass in Brigus.

Jim Hearn: 'The devastation here is just unbelievable.' (CBC )

Other stolen materials included washbasins, mirrors, lamps and even hockey cards, as well as his grandfather's surveying materials.

Altogether, Hearn estimated the value of the stolen goods as being in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Suspecting that thieves would want to offload what they had stolen, Hearn decided to check local flea markets.

He ventured down the Conception Bay highway to Spaniard's Bay where he inquired about them at the Baymen's Flea Market.

"There's certainly mixed feelings," Hearn said, describing his reaction.

"It was like going home, everything I recognized from my house, that's from our house, you know, that's Hearn. At the same time, pent-up anger as well," he said. "How do I get my mitts on the folks who made off with this?"

Flea market owner Gus Gosse co-operated completely with Hearn, and immediately returned the goods he identified.

Gosse said he had not been suspicious about the goods, because of the couple who had brought them to him.

He told CBC News things would be different "if I’d a had a couple of young guys coming in at 20-25 years old or even a couple of gentlemen coming in 20, 40, 50 years old."

The man and the woman seemed credible to him, said Gosse, adding he had dealt with them before.

"You sort of tend to take them for face value. They've been coming here almost I guess from day one and we've been in operation now over two years, and I’ve never had any trouble with them and never thought that there was anything wrong."

On Sunday, RCMP stopped the couple — who live in Brigus, but who are not originally from the community — on a road next to the Hearn residence.

The man, 49, and the woman, 36, are due to appear in provincial court in November on four charges of break and enter as well as one charge of possession of stolen property.

Hearn, meanwhile, has recovered about half of what was missing, with Gosse helping to track down some of the materials he had already sold, including the surveying materials.

"If you're dealing in stolen stuff, stay away. I don't want no part of it," Gosse said.

With files from Adam Walsh