An Austrian man unearthed a gold treasure worth 168 million euros while renovating his basement.

Humans are naturally curious, wondering what lies at the other end of any mysterious rope or cable they encounter in the world, but the results are often insignificant, let alone worth millions of dollars. However, an Austrian plumber unexpectedly struck gold, a story both vivid and true.

While renovating a villa in Vienna, he glimpsed such a rope protruding from the basement floor. After digging through the concrete through which the rope emerged, he was stunned. The rope connected to a chest full of gold, estimated to be worth approximately 168 million euros. These gold coins, weighing approximately 30 kilograms, were identified as pre-World War II artifacts because each one bears the portrait of composer Mozart. They were stored in a rusty metal box embedded in the concrete basement of a house in the Pentsing district of Vienna, Austria.

“This is truly unbelievable,” the man said on a German talk show in 2024. “I’ve been working on construction sites since I was 15. I occasionally find a few coins, but this is simply incredible.”

Even more interestingly, although the treasure doesn’t belong to him, he may receive half of it. In Austria, the law has special provisions allowing the finder to split the treasure equally with the homeowner. According to German media reports, this special provision was almost missed by another worker. A few days earlier, another worker noticed the unusual rope but chose to ignore it. When the unnamed plumber began working in the basement, he was the first to try pulling the rope, attempting to haul it out of the ground. Since the rope wouldn't budge, he picked up a shovel and dug through the concrete floor, eventually unearthing the metal box from a spot that had been sealed with cement years earlier.

In Europe, the discovery of old, even ancient, coins is quite frequent and takes many forms. In recent years, a group of seven friends using metal detectors discovered Britain's richest treasure trove in a farmer's field in England, unearthing 2,584 silver coins dating from 1066 to 1088, worth approximately 392 million yuan. Also in England, a couple renovating a 17th-century building on their farm discovered 100 coins from the First English Civil War. In the Czech Republic, a woman found 2,150 early medieval silver coins while taking a walk. Sometimes, underwater dives are necessary for discoveries; for example, in Italy, a diver discovered 30,000 fourth-century Roman copper and bronze coins. In a small town in southwestern Germany, another construction worker, planning to lay swimming pool pipes, discovered 1,600 medieval coins minted around 1320 AD.

Now, thanks to a strangely secured rope embedded in concrete, Vienna has joined the ranks of European discoveries of astonishing treasures.

(Original title: He Was Just Renovating a Basement. He Tugged a Rope in the Floor—and Discovered a $2.4 Million Gold Treasure.)