He thought it was a small fortune, but it is the largest “piece” of gold discovered in England. How much the treasure is sold at auction

In his search for treasure, a treasure hunter faced with faulty equipment has unearthed what is believed to be the largest gold nugget ever found in England.

An unexpected discovery

Richard Brock discovered the gold nugget, which weighs 64.8 grams (about 2.3 ounces), in England’s Shropshire hills near the border with Wales, auction house Mullock Jones announced Thursday. The nugget is about the size of a UK 50 pence coin. This find, nicknamed Hiro’s Nugget, has an estimated value of between 30,000 pounds ($38,000) and 40,000 pounds ($50,700), according to auction house Mullock Jones, which is handling the sale.

However, luck seemed to be on Brock’s side, whose equipment nearly failed him on the day of the dig. When Brock arrived at the Shropshire site in May, he discovered his metal detector was malfunctioning, according to a news release from Mullock Jones. As his hopes dwindled, he turned to older equipment. Initially, he only found a small coin, but within five minutes he made the amazing discovery, the auction house said.

“It goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what equipment you’re using, if you’re paying attention to what might be hidden under the ground, that makes all the difference,” Brock said in the release.

A treasure shrouded in mystery

The nugget is considered a “rare find,” auctioneer Ben Jones of Mullock Jones told CNN on Thursday. How it got to the excavation site remains a mystery. Parts of the Shropshire Hills were once under a prehistoric ocean and pieces of coral are often discovered there, according to the auction house.

“The site contains an old road/railway and has remnants of Welsh stone in it,” auctioneer Jones said, adding: “So there are a variety of possibilities as to how it got there.”

The auction ends on April 1st.

Although Hiro’s Nugget is believed to be the largest so far discovered in England, several previous finds from other parts of the UK have surpassed it in size. The record holder is the Reunion nugget, weighing 121.3 grams [4.3 uncii]found in Scotland in 2019