A treasure hunter has discovered the largest gold nugget ever found in England worth £30,000 - despite having a faulty metal detector.
Richard Brock, 67, travelled three-and-a-half hours from his home in Somerset to join an organised expedition on farmland in the Shropshire Hills.
On arrival he found he had difficulty with his detecting kit and had to resort to using a dodgy old machine which was not even working properly.
But moments later Richard, who has been metal detecting for 35 years, discovered the biggest find of his life - after unearthing a 64.8g golden nugget.
Named ‘Hiro’s Nugget’, the metal lump is now set to fetch at least £30,000 at auction as it's believed to be the biggest find of its kind on English soil.
Dad-of-four Richard said: "I have been detecting since 1989 and decided to join the trip as a similar previous one to Australia was cancelled during the pandemic. "So I drove three-and-a-half hours to Shropshire and I actually arrived about an hour late, thinking I'd missed the action.
"Everyone there had all this up-to-date kit and I bowled up with three old machines, and one of them packed in there and then. "At first I just found a few rusty old tent pegs with this back-up detector which had a fading screen display.
"But after only 20 minutes of scanning the ground I found this nugget buried about five of six inches down in the ground.
"I was a perhaps bit too honest and started showing people, and then all of a sudden I had swarms of other detectorists scanning the same area.
"The machine I was using was pretty much kaput - it was only half working. It just goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what equipment you use.
"If you are walking over the find and are alert enough to what might be lurking underneath the soil, that makes all the difference.
"I couldn't believe it - I turned up late, was only there a matter of minutes and this treasure hunting expedition was supposed to last all day.
"I couldn't look for anything else as I had the land owner, the organiser of the dig and every other detectorist around me trying to get a look at this nugget."
Just what a gold nugget was doing in the Shropshire Hills, near Much Wenlock, remains somewhat of a mystery.
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