A treasure hunter struggling with faulty equipment has unearthed a gold nugget believed to be the largest ever found in England.
Richard Brock discovered the gold nugget, weighing 64.8 grams, in the country’s Shropshire Hills near the border with Wales, auction house Mullock Jones said today.
The nugget is around the size of a UK 50 pence coin.
The find, nicknamed Hiro’s Nugget, has an estimated worth of between £30,000 ($57,800) and £40,000 ($77,065), according to Shropshire-based Mullock Jones, which is handling the sale.
However, it almost seemed that luck had eluded Brock, whose equipment almost failed him on the day of the dig.
When Brock arrived at the site in Shropshire in May, he discovered that his metal detector was faulty, according to a press release from Mullock Jones.
As his hopes dimmed, he turned to a piece of older equipment.
At first he found only a coin of little value, but within five minutes he made the shocking discovery, the auction house said.
“It just goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what equipment you use, if you are walking over the find and are alert enough to what might be lurking underneath the soil, that makes all the difference,” Brock said in the release.
The auction ends April 1.
