Rock used as doorstop by old lady found to be worth more than $1 million

Many of us are pretty inventive when it comes to keeping doors open – shoving a shoe, a box, or even a big old book in the way to keep them from closing.

But one woman’s makeshift doorstop trumps all the rest after it emerged that the overlooked item was worth a staggering €1 million (around $1.1 million or £845,000).

The jaw-dropping piece of treasure was picked up by the elderly and unwitting woman in a streambed in southeastern Romania.

As far as she was concerned, it was just a heavy rock, which she could use as a handy door wedge.

In fact, the 3.5kg (7.7lb) stone turned out to be one of the biggest intact chunks of amber in the world, El Paisreports..

Amber is an ancient tree resin which fossilises to become the much-vaunted gemstone. And in Romania, it can be found around the village of Colti embedded in sandstone from the banks of the River Buzau.

A form of amber known as rumanite has been mined there since the 1920s – prized for its deep red hues.

And yet, not only was the woman who found the giant rumanite nugget unaware of its true identity, but jewel thieves who once targeted her home also overlooked the extraordinary gem, ScienceAlert reports.

Sadly, the woman was never able to cash in on her incredible find, because it wasn’t till after her death, in 1991, that the relative who inherited her home decided to take a closer look at it.

Upon discovering the true value of the "doorstop", he sold it to the Romanian state, which then had it analysed by experts at the Museum of History in Krakow in Poland.

The museum buffs concluded that the amber was between 38 and 70 million years old.

It is now classified as a national treasure and has been on display at the Provincial Museum of Buzau since 2022.

The discovery is reminiscent of another case, in which a man in Michigan kept a large piece of rock as a doorstop only to learn decades later that this apparently unremarkable boulder was, in fact, a meteorite worth $100,000.

If only our old shoes and boxes were worth as much...

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