A million-dollar doorstop: A woman was holding the door with a rock that turned out to be an incredibly valuable material
After her death in 1991, a man inherited the property and noticed that the “rock” could be valuable, so he decided to have it appraised and discovered its true worth.
There is a standard when it comes to the items parents leave to their children as inheritance. A house, money, or even a car are some of the most common and valuable possessions in a will. However, sometimes, heirs find genuine treasures hidden away.
This is what happened in Romania, where a man inherited a house that contained one of the largest intact pieces of amber in the world, with an estimated value of one million dollars.
The “rock,” weighing 7.7 pounds, was found by a relative of the man in the bed of a stream in Romania, who, thinking it was just an ordinary stone, took it home to use as a doorstop.
The elderly woman, unaware of the treasure she had at her doorstep, used the amber fragment as a doorstop for years. It was so unique that even the thieves who once broke into her house didn’t realize the treasure they were overlooking.
After her death in 1991, the man inherited the property and noticed that the “rock” might be valuable, so he decided to have it appraised. To his surprise, he discovered that the 7.7-pound doorstop was actually an amber deposit worth one million dollars.
The government of the country, interested in the fragment, bought it and sent it to the Museum of History in Krakow, Poland, to be studied before exhibiting it at the Provincial Museum of Buzau, Romania. According to estimates, the amber is between 38 and 70 million years old.
“Its discovery holds great significance both scientifically and museum-wise,” explained the director of the Provincial Museum of Buzau, Daniel Costache, to El País.
The home of amber
Amber is a fossilized resin of plant origin that takes more than 40,000 years to form. In addition to its medicinal and aromatic properties, this precious stone is highly valued in the jewelry and ornamentation sectors for its light colors and warm tones.
Romania is one of the countries with the largest amber reserves in the world, with the Buzau River, located in the Colti commune where the elderly woman lived, being one of the main sources of this precious resin.
The presence of this precious stone is so common in the area that Buzău County has been dubbed “the home of amber,” and the fragments of this resin in the region are known as “rumanites.”
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