Treasure hunter with faulty detector strikes gold when he finds a £30,000 nugget in the Shropshire Hills
Richard Brock, 67, traveled three and a half hours from his home in Somerset to take part in an organized expedition to farmland in the Shropshire Hills.
When he arrived, he discovered he was having trouble with his tracking device and had to resort to a dodgy old device that didn’t even work properly.
But just moments later, Richard, who has been searching for metals for 35 years, discovered the biggest find of his life – after unearthing a 64.8g gold nugget.
The nugget of metal, dubbed Hiro’s Nugget, is now expected to fetch at least £30,000 at auction as it is believed to be the largest find of its kind on English soil.
Father-of-four Richard said: “I have been attending since 1989 and decided to take part in the trip as a similar previous trip to Australia was canceled during the pandemic.”
“So I drove three and a half hours to Shropshire and actually arrived about an hour late because I thought I had missed the action.”
“Everyone there had this modern equipment and I threw in three old machines and I packed one of them up right away.”
“At first I just found some rusty old tent pegs with this replacement detector whose screen display was fading.
“But after searching the ground for just 20 minutes, I found this nugget buried about five to six inches deep in the ground.
“I was maybe a little too honest and started showing people, and then suddenly I had hordes of other detectors scanning the same area.
“The machine I was using was pretty broken – it was only half working. It just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what equipment you use.”
“Walking over the discovery and being observant enough to see what might be lurking beneath the ground makes all the difference.
“I couldn’t believe it – I arrived late, was only there for a matter of minutes and this treasure hunting expedition was supposed to last all day.”
“I had nothing else to look for because the landowner, the excavation organizer and all the other detector specialists around me were trying to get a look at this nugget.”
Exactly what a gold nugget did in the Shropshire Hills near Much Wenlock remains a mystery.
But parts like Wenlock Edge are an ancient landscape that once lay beneath a prehistoric ocean, and hunters often find remnants of coral in the area.
There were also large amounts of rock that originally came from Wales – a country known to be rich in gold.
Richard’s discovery was made at a site believed to be an old track or road through which railway lines passed, and which contained stones that may have come from Wales.
The only larger specimens in Great Britain have so far been found in Wales and Scotland.
The Douglas nugget found in Perthshire weighed 85.7g, another from the Anglesey coast weighed 97.12g and the Reunion nugget found in Scotland in 2019 weighed 121.3g.
Retired cameraman Richard added: “After some research we could only find anything bigger than this in Wales and Scotland.”
“The last one said to be larger in England weighed 54 grams, but mine weighs 64.8 grams. So we’re pretty sure it’s the largest one found on English soil.”
“I contacted the finds liaison officer and they were happy to let me do whatever I wanted with it, so I thought I would try to sell it at auction.”
“I will share the selling price with the landowner. I found it last May, but it wasn’t until recently that I found out it could be the greatest – it’s truly incredible.”
Auction house Mullock Jones is offering the nugget for sale in a limited-time auction that began last weekend and runs until April 1, with an estimate of £30,000.
Auctioneer Ben Jones said: “We expect a lot of interest in this property. It is a rare opportunity to acquire a stunning gold nugget.”
“We are offering it as a single item to online bidders from Friday March 15th until 6pm on April 1st.”
