BELGIAN SEWER WORKER STRIKES GOLD

 

For a student with a summer job working on a Belgian building site, “money down the drain” has taken on a whole new meaning: excavating the trenches for a sewage system, he stumbled across a hidden trove of gold worth an estimated €9m (£8m).

“We suddenly saw something lying there,” 18-year-old Kobe told the Belgian news network VTM. “At first I thought it was €1 coins. So we started digging them up. Then we saw a gold bar. It turned out to be a bit more than we thought.”

The student, who has not been further identified, was working with colleagues on the site of a former brewery on Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, about 19 miles (30km) north-west of Brussels, when they made the discovery on Tuesday.

The hoard, which includes gold coins, nuggets and numbered bullion bars, was stashed in a bag in a bricked-in cellar wall beneath the grand villa originally built for the brewery's owner, Theophilus Van Assche, in the late 19th century.

Kobe said: "It's just not something you expect when you're working on a regular Tuesday morning," adding that the treasure trove appeared to have been deliberately hidden. "It was really bricked in there – not in a safe or anything."

Brewing on the site began in 1899 and ceased in 1970, and the listed property – the wrought-iron gates of which still bear the initials "VA" – is being completely renovated by the social welfare organisation CAW Oost-Vlaanderen to create new offices and housing.

To read the complete article, see:
Belgian student strikes gold worth €9m while digging a new sewer (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/belgian-student-strikes-gold-worth-9m-while-digging-sewers)

For other coverage, see:
$10 Million in Gold Found Buried Under Former Brewery in Belgium (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ydzg0dnz7o)
Construction Workers Dig Up Mysterious $10M Gold Stash While Working on Sewer System (https://people.com/construction-workers-find-gold-stash-with-estimated-worth-of-usd10m-12059840)
$10 Million in Gold Found Buried Under Former Brewery in Belgium (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/world/europe/gold-bars-coins-belgium.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web