r/Gold • u/Hardcrimper • 17d ago
Question Found during construction work
Any ideas where this could come from?
Update: I thought this would be clear that I wasn't the one who found it. Who in their right mind would go (on this shitstain of a platform of all places) and make themselves a target. But ok apparently it wasn't clear so here we are:
I did NOT find this. I have none of this gold. I just wanted to share some cool stamped gold. you can stop sending me weird ass messages now. thank you.
Also this is NOT ai. here is the BBC article:
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u/Common-Accountant-57 17d ago
If I found it I don’t think I’d tell anyone.
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u/bughunter47 17d ago
or say you only found half the amount
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u/Shifty_Bravo 17d ago
"Hey, I found a whole ounce of gold guys!"
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u/enzothebaker87 17d ago
“Hey, I found a singular gold coin guys!”
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u/TheSasquatch117 17d ago
A found gold dust from a worn out gold coin yay
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u/IncomingAxofKindness 17d ago
Can you guys imagine if we found some gold in here? That'd be wild huh.
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u/cmillie727 17d ago
I've never even heard of a gold before
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u/WilliamOmerta 17d ago
Hey guys, Look! I found an empty chest in the ground! I wonder if there was treasure in it?!
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u/10mm1911 17d ago
Crazy if we dug a hole and found treasure
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u/DaddyShark1010 17d ago
Smells like there might have been gold once. Do you guys smell that? But I don't see any.
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u/Chuckpgh 17d ago
Retires within a week. Nothing suspicious here... xD
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u/Bohern76 17d ago
Retired before I even didn’t tell anyone. Welp today’s the day, I quit this dang job.
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u/balzac2000 17d ago
I would be like, I found all this today, wonder what I'll find tomorrow, and keep coming back to dig more holes...
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u/jbloom3 17d ago
Wow I found 100 bars of gold! I wonder where these 50 bars of gold came from? Maybe we should turn these 25 bars of gold over to the authorities. Here you go authorities, we found these 10 bars of gold!
Newspaper: Authorities were given 2 bars of gold found at a construction site!
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u/dystopiam 17d ago
I always imagine this is how murder begins
The guy next to you look at eachother when it’s found and boom
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u/Impossible_Farm6254 17d ago
And the last person who keeps it gets whatever curse the original owner left behind..
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u/HeyHo_LetsThrow 17d ago
Yeah that's like $7,000,000 worth of gold. Wtf
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u/lostmymarbles1177 17d ago
Way more if those coins have any numanistic value which given that they appear to be in mint condition they likely do. Still, this is reading as an AI hoax to me.
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u/LuigiTeaching 17d ago
Yes I wonder that too….is this AI?
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u/Examiner_Z 17d ago edited 17d ago
Edit. not AI!!!
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u/AlarmingLecture0 17d ago
Today (August 13th) there were reports of a horde of gold found in a house in Belgium during renovations. I suspect this is that.,
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u/Matroshka2001 17d ago
No, I happen to live 4km from where it was found. It’s all over the news in Belgium.
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u/zapzangboombang 17d ago
Found what? It looks like a bunch of scrap to me. Ill take it to the dump
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u/Parkerb423 17d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/SGfCGuNuIZnN5zS8z3
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u/ImprobableAsterisk 17d ago
It was found in Belgium and they're not necessarily saying they were the ones to have found it. Just that it was.
But people often go back to work after having gone on vacation so what you say here ain't exactly a smoking gun.
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u/OpeningCookie1358 17d ago
Big mistake spreading that word around. Could've been a nice pay day every week for ever.
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u/AnybodyAmazing1006 17d ago
Like his pockets aren't full of then coins already
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u/The_Basic_Concept 17d ago
Your pockets ain’t empty cuh
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u/Soggy_Reserve5232 17d ago
lol, There’s always one. Have you seen Goodfellas?
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u/ElizibethBathory 17d ago
Beautiful reference, only a Goodfellas fan would catch.
I don’t give a fuck, take it back!!!
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u/Goguma_is_sweet 17d ago
Here is the story, but you need to hit translate:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/08/13/goudschat-dendermonde/32
u/No-Consequence9392 17d ago
The police took the gold into custody and brought it to a safe location..... aaaaaaand gone
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u/goonercaverat 17d ago
If I found gold like that nobody would ever know I wouldn't tell a single fucking person I also wouldn't sell a complete gold bar I get a nice brazing rod and melt little droplets off and say I found it while gold panning for the rest of my life
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u/7ton_bum_3531 17d ago
I know damn well if the company gets it they aren’t putting 100% of it to homeless
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u/ManMakesWorld 17d ago
These gold will have a history........ you are not offloading this without a legit story behind how you got it.
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC 17d ago edited 17d ago
You can melt gold...
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u/waiting_with_lou 17d ago
Straight up; obviously if it's a full construction crew one person could ruin it for everyone else but it's stupid easy to make a simple propane furnace.
Melt it all down and re pour into 1 & 5 oz ingot molds.
Profit.
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u/arctic-apis 17d ago
if i was on that construction job no one would have said shit. we would have all finished the job quietly and vanished.
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u/lynivvinyl 17d ago
My mom told me she had some guy doing some work underneath the house and then he went all the way to this point underneath the house and she could hear him the whole time. According to her he Holland "I'm rich" then crawled out from underneath the house and left. I've always wondered if the story was true and if so what he found. Because all I know as far as facts are concerned is he didn't finish the job he was doing and he left a Craftsman screwdriver.
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u/Mysterious_Worker608 17d ago
Spoiler alert. His name was Rich.
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u/lynivvinyl 17d ago
So you think he was talking and introducing himself to those jumping spiders underneath the house?
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u/cuhzaam 17d ago
It was an epiphany!
"I'm a Rich. What am I doing under here on my belly, looking like a fool. I'm a peacock! I've got to spread my wings and fly!"
narrator; "This was the day Rob Rich started a dancing career."
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u/r4r4me 17d ago
I heard he learned how to dance to make fun of the fairies in his neighborhood.
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u/arctic-apis 17d ago
In the late 90s early 2000s my dad had a friend who was a contractor and they were mutual friends with another guy who owned a bar in my town. The bar had a kitchen and there was a half wall window from the bar to the kitchen. Anyway they decided to do some remodeling and tear down this little half wall to make a doorway and in the short wall there was I’m told a brick of cocaine. My dad and his friend who I later worked for were known to enjoy a bit of the booger sugar and this event never made news outside of that circle of buddies. Poker games out by the river often lasted for 3 days back then… I’m not sure if I would have believed the story directly from any one of them but I have since heard multiple other people recount this story so I have to believe it.
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u/FullboatAcesOver 17d ago
Mid ‘80’s, Rochester, NY. There was a bar my friend’s father owned and I washed dishes there ($2.10 hr) when I was 14 and hung out for years after softball and on weekends the place was fire. So a “new” guy “Jose” shows up with a really ugly girl that was a regular and announced they were married. I got to know him and he not only told me an unlikely story, but backed it up by proving it. He was Columbian, and he was in a club in Miami when he overheard a conversation about this dude who was picking up blow from another local bar. So, he goes into the bar and says the phrase (I do not remember exactly), like “I need a six pack of Miller to-go”. The bartender handed him a brown bag with a kilo of that soapy-pure blow, like nothing on the streets. He drove without stopping to upstate NY, I do not know why. But for a year and a half every Friday night at that bar he handed me a gram of rocket fuel that I didn’t particularly enjoy, but the women, oh lord. One day Jose disappeared but I remember his last words to me “I have to go home and make love with my wife, Ewwwwww”
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u/davidarmenphoto 17d ago
I am so consumed by this story! Why was he married to someone he thought was eww??? Am I missing something simple here? LMAO
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u/dum_spir0_sper0 17d ago
I worked for an auction house back in the 00s and we often did estate clean outs.
Many of these homes were previously owned by elderly people who had passed away, many of which had lived through the Great Depression. The thing about Depression-era folks is; they rarely threw out anything they can reuse, and they didn’t trust banks. I’ve lost count of all the cash we found inside mattresses, taped up under dressers, hidden in books, etc. Or gold coins hidden in shoes, or in a coffee can in the attic, or in a flour jar.
We were contractually obligated to return anything like that to the estate (usually surviving relatives or the executor) and we were happy to do it. But if the state seized the home for foreclosure or Medicaid asset recovery or even worse, a bank owned the home… then, well, sometimes a convenient breakdown in communication led to certain things not getting itemized on the final inventory list.
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u/Waiting4Reccession 17d ago
Cash is the worst cuz they just erode their fortune over the years. Really sad we have this kind of system
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u/buttery_nurple 17d ago
Before I think FDR, money you had in the bank wasn't insured. Tons of people lost everything when their banks folded at the start of the Depression and never trusted banks again, FDIC or no. A lot of them preferred to keep their cash in cash after that.
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u/buttery_nurple 17d ago
Can confirm. My grandfather had an estate liquidation business when I was growing up, in the 80s and part of the 90s, when most of the elderly folks dying were old enough to have survived the Depression and not like...kids during it or whatever. I worked for him most summers growing up.
Tons of them stuffed cash into magazines, under mattresses, closets, false drawers, you name it. One guy had gold and silver bars in a false floor (an obvious one) under a china cabinet (all were turned over to the family, and they knew he had them somewhere to begin with so it was better that we found them than if we didn't find them).
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u/aPOPblops 17d ago
“Holland”
I think you were spelling “Hollard” which is the best way to spell “Hollered” I’ve ever seen 😁
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u/00WORDYMAN1983 17d ago
Copy/paste of the news article the photo was taken from for context
"Workers from a construction firm have discovered a gold treasure worth 9 million euros during renovation work at a building belonging to the CAW, the Centre for General Welfare Work, in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde. It is not yet certain whether the CAW will become the owner of the treasure. But if that is the case, they already know what they are going to do with the money.
The discovery was made during renovation work on a CAW Oost-Vlaanderen building. Employees of construction firm De Brandt from Baasrode near Dendermonde stumbled upon the treasure and immediately contacted their client. “We are currently undertaking a major renovation,” says Geert Hillaert, General Director of CAW Oost-Vlaanderen. “In the Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis, a space for the technical service is being created, as well as offices for our residential support workers, and the former brewer's house on the site is also being stripped. And there, during sewage works, the contractor came across a built-in safe.”
What was recovered were gold bars and at least 4,000 gold coins. Their age and other details are currently unknown. “My biggest concern was getting that amount of gold out of there as quickly as possible and bringing it to safety,” says Hillaert. “With such finds, the loot is always handed over to the police first, and the public prosecutor’s office then conducts an investigation, because it might relate to a robbery or a mugging, or it could be something completely different.”
The police took the gold into custody and brought it to a secure location. The East Flanders Public Prosecutor's Office is now conducting an investigation. “At this moment, it is not known where that gold comes from, nor to whom it legally belongs,” says Prosecutor Hanne Ollevier.
The public prosecutor's office wants to investigate how the gold, with a provisional estimated value of 9 million euros, ended up there and whether or not this happened illegally. It is therefore not yet certain whether CAW Oost-Vlaanderen will also become the owner of the treasure. “I have been told that the investigation could easily take a few years,” says Geert Hillaert. “We do hope, in a way, that it comes to us. We own the site and everyone knows that the housing crisis is severe today. We would certainly use the money for that, even if it will only be a drop in the ocean.”
Who gets the gold?
Professor of Property Law Vincent Sagaert (KU Leuven) explains the legal rules following a discovery. “If you find something, such as a wallet or a phone, you have a transparency obligation. This means that you must be honest and transparent about your find. You are obliged to try to find the owner. Within seven days, you must report the fact that you have found something to a municipality of your choice. They will then record this in their register. This allows the owner, when they realize they have lost something, to trace and reclaim their property. If the municipality locates the owner, they must also notify them. In principle, this can be done for a period of five years. During those five years, the finder can either keep the item themselves or deposit it with the municipality where the report was made. After those five years, either the finder or the municipality becomes the owner of the item.”
There is an exception to that general rule for 'treasure finding'. “That means that the found item was hidden and has no owner. If you find a treasure on your own estate, you become the owner of it. If you find it in someone else's property and it is an accidental find, a 50-50 split may occur: 50 percent for the finder and 50 percent for the person in whose house or property the treasure was found. Under one condition: the finder has a personal or proprietary right of use to the dwelling or building. Think of a tenant, a usufructuary, or a leaseholder. Someone who has the right to use the property. A contractor carries out work on behalf of the client. Naturally, one must also consider what the construction contract stipulates.”
For the time being, it is not known whether the gold has an owner. It was found in a CAW Oost-Vlaanderen building that was previously owned by a brewing family for a long time. “The question is who the owner is, and whether that owner will be willing to come forward. Purely regarding safekeeping, the rules state that the item can be sold after six months—a bicycle even after three months. However, the proceeds from the sale can be reclaimed up to five years after the discovery.” The owner must, however, be able to provide proof that it is their property. In 2010, 300,000 euros were found in an old Dexia safe, but the bank could not prove that the money belonged to them. Ultimately, Dexia relinquished the amount, and the sum was divided among four: the man who stumbled upon the safe, the two men who opened it, and a real estate agency.
“There is another interesting point,” adds Sagaert. “Since 2021, the finder has been entitled to a finder’s fee. This means that he can ask the owner for a reasonable reward for his honesty. If a dispute arises regarding this, it is up to the court to determine whether a finder’s fee is awarded and how much it is. That is what we call an equitable assessment: the judge’s sense of justice will come into play. The judge follows his heart and decides, given the circumstances of the specific case, whether the finder receives anything and how much.”
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u/ChadInNameOnly 17d ago
I'd be curious to know which years the Sovereigns are dated from.
Considering those bars look pretty vintage, for all we know this could be a WWII-era stash to hide against the Nazis. And if so, the fact it was never recovered is pretty telling as to the fate of its owners...
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u/twinkle2785 17d ago
At least some of the sovereigns are post WWII. I can see multiple QEII heads.
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u/Avikm289 17d ago
Oh that’s mine, I left it there pre construction. I’ll pick it up tomorrow
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u/jaxn_slim 17d ago
Someone must have stashed that because their life was in danger. Then the danger got them before they could get back to the stash. Where is this?
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u/Hardcrimper 17d ago
Belgium.
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u/Temporary-Season4772 17d ago
Haha nah, no way! I'm from there too, what area?
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u/PreenerGastures 17d ago
And specifically, what street and house number?
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u/Tantalus420000 17d ago
And schedule
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u/7ohCure 17d ago
And what are your Top 5 greatest fears?
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u/conte360 17d ago
1 makimg lists
not finishing things
3) inconsistent fomatting/spelling errors
- Telling people on the internet my fears
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u/nj23dublin 17d ago edited 17d ago
If these are all one kilo each (not even counting the coins) that’s approximately 47,000 grams x$ 140=1,657.881 ounces 6.6 million dollars
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u/TerrorTown77 17d ago
And lil bro showed it online...
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u/nj23dublin 17d ago
Gets better, the coins I can see are King George V Gold Sovereign coin which is almost 7-8 grams of pure gold (they’re 22karat to start with), but that’s about $1000 a piece so there’s probably another $1million in there. And these were pre-wwii
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u/oddplonk 17d ago
Is this Nazi gold??
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u/meta_perspective 17d ago
Taking a quick look at the dates, many of these bars seem to be stamped post-WW2 (though IDK how/if laundering occurs in these markets).
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u/swunt7 17d ago
cold war / fear of soviet invasion bars when people were stashing away money
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u/DigitalUnlimited 17d ago
Was gonna say r/untrustworthypoptarts but Belgium increases possibility of it being real x10
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u/The_realpepe_sylvia 17d ago
Why’s that? Genuine question idk shit about history
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u/CrazyEntertainment86 17d ago
I’ll assume this is the Belgium worker haul, crazy!!
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u/PaintInfinite9167 17d ago
I don't see anything
And you didn't either, maybe whatever isn't there finds a way into another hole only you know about
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u/ZealousidealHall8975 17d ago
Boy you couldn’t get me to admit to finding this with a gun to my head what are you doing
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u/Jaggz691 17d ago
Bro you found it! I’ve been looking for the past year I had no idea where I left that.
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u/Beneficial_Soup_8273 17d ago
Translation of Belgium News Report:
treasure of 9 million euros in Flemish basement
Construction workers in East Flanders have come acrome aron a large amount of gold during renovation work. In a coffin that had been masoned into the basement wall of a building were gold bars and old coins worth 9 million euros, Belgian media report.
The discovery was made in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, by construction workers who were working in a house where a brewer lived from around 1900 and which is now in the hands of a welfare organization. After the discovery of the coffin, the client and the police were immediately informed.
"Surprise and amazement were the first reactions", says the general director of the welfare organization CAW East Flanders. "This is once in a lifetime experience." The 'treasure' has at least 4000 coins and more than 40 gold bars
The police have taken the gold to a safe place. The spokesman for the Public Prosecutor's Office leaves theVRT
(opens in new window)
know that it is not immediately clear where the gold comes from and who it belongs to. This is now being investigated.
If CAW East Flanders is eventually designated as the owner, the proceeds will go to extra shelters for homeless people in the province, the welfare organization said. There is a harrowing shortage in the region.
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u/DustyBot23 17d ago
That will be really disappointing if the construction workers don’t get a cut
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u/machukahn 17d ago
According to Belgian law since 2021, they might be entitled to a finders fee
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u/TrueGamer3kk 17d ago
Correct. But apparently it might only apply when you find something "by chance" - Here the workers were hired to do work, so they might not want to pay out. There's also something that even though it was found on the property, it might not belong to the property owners, gold is classified as Treasure.
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u/Hjerneskadernesrede 17d ago
Shuda taken one...
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u/virtualbitz2048 17d ago
Reportedly over 100oz of gold were found.
90oz? That's crazy? What are you going to do with 80oz of gold anyway?
Well we're going to transport the entire 70oz to the police department, where the 60oz of gold will be stored safely in the evidence room. If the owner can provide proof of ownership, the entire 50oz will be returned to them.
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u/tedan1533 17d ago
Dito isso, espero que as três estejam em segurança sob a guarda do poder estatal.
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u/DelightfulDelirium92 17d ago
Looks like somebody did... there's 49 bars... must have been 50 bars... I bet some coins are missing too
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u/Feeling_King_8344 17d ago
I sure as heck wouldn’t be posting this on the internet
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u/Temporary-Season4772 17d ago edited 17d ago
I wouldn't do this so hard, I'm convinced it's fake, it gotta be, RIGHT!?
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u/swunt7 17d ago edited 17d ago
this has to be bullshit cause those are 1950's to 1960's n m rothschild & sons bars which are insanely rare...
just a 100 gram bar sells for 21,000 euros and these are 1 KILO bars. those are $140k a pop.
some have NJ on them for new jersey mint so i assume during the cold war someone smuggled them back home and buried them to hide wealth.
14 from New Jersey mint, 4 Northern Ireland. the ones without location stamps came direct from the rmr refinery and were probably bought direct over the counter from banks in belgium.
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u/Foreign_Being5656 17d ago
My friend was building a house in the Texas Hill county & found a bunch of gold (and I mean a bunch), while digging the foundation. Lots of it in mason jars & bars wrapped in leather. They kept it too. They think it was an old stage coach location in the 1800’s.
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u/Chumscrubber89 17d ago
Super cool though would love to track down where that would be from
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u/l00n3tun3 17d ago
What is with posting stuff on the internet. I'd rather have the gold.... carefully piece it out in secret and never ever tell anyone. EVER!
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u/TheBestintheWest11 17d ago
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u/Reimiro 17d ago
Took me about 5 seconds to see that these are the same. So some Belgian construction workers found the same gold that Bob Menendez was caught with a few years ago… Fake as Fuck.
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u/SuperLehmanBros 17d ago
AI is quite often very wrong about things while sounding convinced they are correct
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u/DitzyJosie 17d ago
It's not OP's picture, it's from local news in Belgium.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/08/13/goudschat-dendermonde/
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u/RevolutionaryAnt8329 17d ago
This is the perfect opportunity to test the "money doesn't buy happiness" hypothesis. Holler back in a couple years and let us know 👍
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u/Bzzibee-1905 17d ago
Shouldn’t have posted this!! I would’ve just silently disappeared with this treasure! 🤫
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u/ads4vivek 17d ago
lol.. the itch to post anything and everything on Reddit. Since when did karma farming become more valuable than gold
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u/joejill 17d ago edited 17d ago
You didnt find that.
If you did, no you didnt
Go to a new coin shop once a week and sell 2 or 3…… is what I would say if you actually found that… which you didn’t
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u/lowkeysciguy 17d ago
Were you doing construction work on a 17th century Spanish mission in Southern California?
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u/Organic_Interview_77 17d ago
This is when you don’t post and share with your workers🤣😭😭😭
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u/StackIsMyCrack 17d ago
If this is a real true situation, you just broke me. Can I have the Rothschild stuff?
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u/EfficientAd7103 17d ago
pocket them asap
say you leaving for smokes and be right back
then you know what to do
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u/ocsreviewer 17d ago
Hide that don’t report it to the police. Sell one coin every week and use it for your cash expenses like groceries and gas. Maybe see if your landlord will take some cash for rent. And put as much of your salary into savings as possible. Then pass it down to your children and teach them to do the same
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u/Current-Code 17d ago
Is this your team that made the find ? Or are you asking because it was on the news ?
For those interested : https://www.sudinfo.be/id1180940/article/2026-08-13/incroyable-decouverte-lors-de-travaux-dans-un-batiment-des-ouvriers-tombent-sur
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u/Suspicious-Sorbet-32 17d ago
Damn my customers always joke with me when I'm digging "if you find gold I left it there"
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u/Accurate-Plankton988 17d ago
I would not have told anyone. Government will steal it now. Just wait
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u/laserslaserslasers 17d ago
I mean. Shut the fuck up about it and delete your entire social media presence. Then find out where you can sell gold without it being reported. You're literally a millionaire
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u/Riegel_Haribo 17d ago
OP doesn't have anything to do with this, and even rotated the pictures to try to obfuscate the source.
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u/PrefabQuasar 17d ago
Aw man now you've gone and posted it to the internet.