Rock Used as Doorstop for Decades Turns Out to Be Amber, Worth Over $1 Million

A doorstop became one of the largest and most valuable pieces of amber ever discovered, now classified as a national treasure.

A village woman in Romania, elderly and apparently quite unsophisticated, used a piece of what she had always thought was an ordinary rock to prop open her door for decades. It would be valued at more than $1 million - in fact, a treasure in plain sight.

Amber-Chunk
Image: Buzău County Museum

The story started when the woman, while outdoors, stumbled upon a 3.5-kilo stone-7.7-pound-in the bed of a stream flowing from Colti, a village in southeast Romania. She took it home, never knowing that it would serve as a doorstop for years to come. It was not until she died in 1991 that a relative, now inheriting the house, began to suspect that the "rock" might be more than just a rock. What he found would change everything.

According to El Pais, the stone actually constituted one of the largest pieces of intact amber in the world. Its value? It came in at an estimate of around €1 million — or approximately $1.1 million in U.S. dollars. Amber, which is fossilized tree resin from millions of years ago, has a reputation for having rich, warm colors and is prized as a gemstone.

Amber holds a particular significance in the region surrounding Colti. This amber, known as rumanite, is found nowhere else in such deep, richly reddish shades. It has been mined from the sandstone banks of the River Buzau since the 1920s. Yet, despite this, it would take years before the amber discovered by the woman was recognized for its value. Even jewellery thieves, who once targeted the home, completely missed the amber, unaware of a fortune right under their noses.

The amber was eventually sold by the relative who had gained the home to the Romanian government. Experts from the Museum of History in Krakow, Poland, were brought in to appraise it, and what they learned was out of this world: the age of the amber was estimated at between 38 and 70 million years.

"It is a great discovery, very important from a scientific point of view, but also for a museum" - explained Daniel Costache, the director of Provincial Museum in Buzau in his interview to El Pais.

Amber-doorstop
Image: Buzău County Museum


Since 2022, this beautiful piece of amber has been considered a national treasure of Romania and is now displayed in the Provincial Museum of Buzau, in the same county where it came from.

This story of the amber of great value might remind one of other astonishing discoveries such as that of a man from Michigan who used a meteorite as a doorstop for many years, finding out later it was worth $100,000. While the amber chunk would be an odd choice for a doorstop, worth a million dollars does point to the greatest of all treasures, at times, just being right there, well, staring one in the face. One could have purchased a great deal of doorstops with that kind of fortune.

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