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Builders uncover 7.6m worth of buried treasure during renovation works

A group of contruction workers working on a brewery renovation project made the find of a lifetime when they quite literally hit the jackpot last week

[A 7.5million stash of gold in a building cellar in Belgium]

A group of builders have dug up literal buried treasure in Belgium(Image: Police department Dendermonde/Facebook)

Of all the things to dig up from under a property during a renovation, this really has to take the cake.

A few weeks ago, stunned construction workers were sent reeling after they dug up human bones in a London garden while performing a home renovation in London. Well, over in Belgium they've done us one better by digging up a slightly less nasty suprise: they found actual buried treasure.

Yep, it would seem that your own personal stash of pirate booty may not be as far-fetched a fantasty as some might think.

A group of contruction workers working on a brewery renovation project in Dendermonde, a city about 19 miles northwest of Brussels, made the find of a lifetime when they quite literally hit the jackpot last Tuesday.

In what might be the most spectacular accidental treasure find this century, the eight construction workers uncovered buckets worth of gold coins and dozens of gold bars worth an eyewatering nine million euros (7.6 million), authorities have confirmed, making last Tuesday the least-average Tuesday at work, ever. Probably.

[A 7.5million stash of gold in a building cellar in Belgium]

A 7.6million stash of gold in a building cellar in Belgium(Image: Police department Dendermonde/Facebook)

It was George Bluth Snr. in the classic 2003 American sitcom Arrested Development that uttered the classic line: "There's always money in the banana stand." And while this case involves a brewery, and not a banana stand, the lesson is the same: Check your walls and under your floors for hidden treasure. Who knows what you might find?

That's what these eight workers found out first hand when they pulled bar after bar of gold out from underneath the foundations of an old brewery, as per Dendermonde Police District chief Patrick Feys.

In total, the construction workers pulled approximately 40 gold bars and 4,000 gold sovereign coins out of the foundations of the building.

Student and part-time construction worker Kobe Phillips was the one who made the motherlode of all discoveries last week.

I thought they were one-euro coins, neatly lined up in a row. We dug them out, and then we saw a small bar of gold lying there, already attached to our digging hammer. There was actually a bit more than wed thought, he said, as per Belgian broadcaster VTM.

Once the discovery was made, the workers called the property owner. The owner then called the police, police told VTM.

According to the East Flanders Public Prosecutors Office, police were called in due the massive value of the discovered bounty, with the gold now being held in a secure and guarded location.

[There's always money in the banana stand]

A construction crew dug up around 40 gold bars during a renovation project at a Belgian brewery(Image: Police department Dendermonde/Facebook)

Dendermonde Police District chief Patrick Feys revealed that some of the gold bars bear stamps dating to the 1960s, while the sovereign coins feature a range of different monarchs and dates.

And, somewhat unsurprisingly, the builders' glittering discovery has already prompted several potential claimants to come out of the woodwork

We already had some citizens who want to claim the gold with different documents to prove that they are descendants, Feys said.

A police investigation is now underway to determine whether there are any criminal connections to the literal case of buried treasure.

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