Gold hunting often conjures images of adventurers sifting through gold pans or seeking huge gold nuggets in far-flung locations. But sometimes gold can be right under your nose – or, for one French couple, right in their back garden. Read on for some of the most unexpected and exciting gold discoveries of recent times.
All dollar values in US dollars and currency conversions correct for the time of valuation.
A trip to the pub usually ends with less change in your pocket. But it was a different story for five Irish builders carrying out groundwork at Cooney's Bar in Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary, Ireland, in 2013. The team of builders found 81 gold coins when working on the foundations.
One of the builders, Shane Comerford, initially dismissed the coins as worthless and threw a fistful to the ground when the find disturbed their work on the pub. But once they wiped away the clay covering the coins, the builders realised they had found something special.
They had discovered a hoard of 17th-century gold guineas and half guineas under the pub's floorboards. The coins are now on display at The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. The finder's reward for locating the gold coins was not disclosed, but it was likely enough to buy the five unlikely treasure finders a few pints.
Not all gold finds are entirely unexpected. In 2014, German artist Michael Sailstorfer buried 30 24-carat gold bars on a beach in Folkestone, southeast England, as part of the town's Triennial art festival. The bars were worth a total of £10,000 ($13.3k), and prospective treasure hunters were given permission to keep anything they found.
Armed with metal detectors and spades, around 500 enthusiastic members of the public flocked to the beach to try to find the bars, which were only a few centimetres long and valued at around £300 ($399) each. The "Folkestone Dig" officially ran from 30 August to 2 November 2014.
However, not everybody who struck gold came forward to publicise their find, making it impossible to know whether all the bars were discovered. There could still be buried treasure on the beach to this day.
The English town of Milton Keynes isn't the first place you'd expect to find South African money. But during lockdown in 2020, one Milton Keynes resident struck gold when they discovered 50 gold coins from apartheid-era South Africa buried in their garden.
According to a report by The British Museum, the Krugerrand coins – the first in South Africa to contain one troy ounce of gold – were minted by the Rand Refinery in Germiston in the 1970s. Each coin was estimated to be worth £1,500 to £2,000 ($1.9k to $2.6k), giving the total hoard a value of up to £100,000 ($133k).
The origins of the gold remain a mystery to this day.
These 80 gold coins, known as US Dollar "Double Eagles", were minted in San Francisco between 1854 and 1913. Hidden in a glass jar, they lay buried in a Hackney garden for almost 70 years. When residents made this extraordinary discovery in 2007 while digging a frog pond, they were understandably curious as to how the coins made their way to east London...
The incredible story goes like this: in 1940, a Jewish family fleeing the Nazis buried the coins in their London back garden, fearing a German invasion. Members of the family tragically died when the house was bombed in the Blitz, meaning the hiding place was lost for decades.
After its discovery in 2007, the hoard was donated to the Museum of London, which later found one of the owner's descendants, Max Sulzbacher. He permanently donated one of the coins to the Hackney Museum, while the rest of the hoard was sold at auction for a total of £98,280 ($154k).
A cleaner at South Korea's Incheon International Airport made an unbelievable discovery during a shift in May 2018. When emptying a bin, the airport worker found seven gold bars worth around $319,000 (£240k).
Despite South Korea's "Finders Keepers" law, which allows the finder to keep the trove if the owner doesn't come forward in six months, the cleaner was not allowed to claim the gold because he was on duty at the time.
The unnamed airport worker missed out on the 5-20% of the gold's total price for which he would have been eligible, which would have been up to $64,000 (£48k).
In November 2001, metal detectorist Cliff Bradshaw was in a potato field near Sandwich, England, when his detector suddenly made a faint, high-pitched whine. The treasure hunter began to dig, and just 18 inches (45cm) below the surface he excavated an early Bronze Age artefact.
Bradshaw had stumbled upon a gold chalice dating from 1700-1500 BC, which had possibly been used by a priest-ruler for spiritual purposes. Now known as the Ringlemere Cup, it was snapped up by the British Museum for £250,000 ($333k), with the lucky finder and the landowner splitting the cash.
When diver Michael DeMar's metal detector beeped during a dive off Florida's Key West in September 2008, he thought he'd probably just come across a discarded beer can. In fact, he'd discovered a rare gold chalice worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hidden beneath about a foot (30.5cm) of sand in 18 feet (5.5m) of water, the cup had been lost for centuries. It's believed to have been one of the treasures on board the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita, which was hit by a storm and sunk in 1622.
The ornate two-handled chalice was sold at auction in 2015, fetching $413,000 (£310k).
In December 2016, friends Mark Hambleton and Joe Kania were metal detecting in a field in Staffordshire. They were about to head home when Kania pulled a piece of gold from the ground. They went on to find three gold necklaces and a bracelet, which a British Museum representative has since described as a "unique find of international importance."
Why? The four gold pieces that made up the find are thought to date to around 400-250BC, and at 2,500 years old are most likely the oldest Iron Age gold ever discovered in Britain. The treasure has since been valued at £325,000 ($433k), which the pair shared with the landowner Stuart Heath.
A 110-year-old piano was the unlikely hiding place for a hoard of more than 900 gold sovereign coins, the largest-ever haul of such coins in the UK. The upright piano had been donated to Bishop's Castle Community College in 2016, and while piano tuner Martin Backhouse was working on it, he found the coins stored in fabric pouches underneath the instrument's keys.
The origins of the hoard remain a mystery. It's still unknown who hid the coins, which date from 1847 to 1915, so carefully beneath the piano's keys – though they probably stashed them away to keep them safe during World War I. Before its donation, Graham and Meg Hemmings had owned the piano for 33 years while their children were learning to play and were completely unaware of the treasure that lay within.
The hoard, valued at £500,000 ($665k), was sold and both the college and the piano tuner who found them received a reward. The piano's previous owners didn't see a penny from the coins' sale but said they were "very happy" some of the money would go to the college.
A couple in the French town of Roanne in the Loire region found themselves under police investigation after discovering 28 gold bars in their back garden. After moving into the property in 2002 the couple discovered six gold bars in 2009, followed by another 22 in 2013. The bars had an estimated value of €800,000 ($887k/£666k).
Despite legally declaring the finds, the couple sparked a criminal investigation when they sold 23 of the bars, creating transaction levels that alerted an anti-laundering agency. The news then attracted other claimants.
The house's previous owner took the couple to court over the ownership of the bullion and won. The finders had to return the remaining gold, along with the money from the sale of 15 of them.
In April 2017, tank collector Nick Mead thought he had a good deal when he bought an old Soviet tank that had been used in Iraq for just £33,000 ($44k). But when he opened the fuel compartment and found five gold bars, he knew he'd got a bargain.
After weighing the haul he estimated the bars were worth around £2 million ($2.6m). The bullion was handed over to the police who attempted to track its origins, which could have been the result of looting in Kuwait by Iraqi officers during the 1990 invasion.
The fate of the gold remains a mystery, although Mead recently told The Daily Mail he regrets handing over the haul to authorities as he hasn't received a penny.
In late 2016, a French man who inherited a house in the town of Evreux, Normandy, was shocked to find that he had gained more than just the property. The house was filled with 220.5lb (100kg) of gold coins, ingots, and bars secreted in different places.
"It started when he found a tinplate box (with gold inside) screwed under a piece of furniture", according to La Dépêche, the local newspaper. The man's next find was inside a "whisky bottle box with a few gold pieces carefully hidden". The hoard gradually grew, and the lucky treasure finder sold it all for €3.5 million ($3.8m/£2.9m), though reports suggest he could have been hit with a hefty inheritance tax.
While walking their dog in 2013, a couple from northern California made a record-breaking discovery. Buried on their property were several rusted cans filled with a total of 1,427 gold coins – the largest gold coin hoard ever unearthed in the US. The coins were all minted between 1847 and 1894 and probably hidden away during the 19th-century Gold Rush.
Although the exact history of the coins remains a mystery, their value was estimated at $10 million (£7.5m).
After the discovery, the finders of the so-called Saddle Ridge Hoard chose to remain anonymous, as US Treasure Trove Laws meant the collection could be claimed by descendants of the person who originally buried it. The finders then decided to sell the coins via Amazon.
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