{"id":637395,"date":"2026-08-14T19:40:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T19:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/637395\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T19:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T19:40:16","slug":"it-turned-out-to-be-a-bit-more-than-we-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/637395\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;It turned out to be a bit more than we thought&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BELGIAN STUDENTS HAVE struck gold after unearthing a stash of the precious metal while conducting an excavation near Brussels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe suddenly saw something lying there,\u201d 18-year-old Kobe told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hln.be\/dendermonde\/jobstudent-kobe-18-ontdekte-samen-met-collega-goudschat-van-9-miljoen-euro-in-dendermonde-bleek-toch-iets-meer-dan-we-dachten~acce5a9f\/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2026%2Faug%2F14%2Fbelgian-student-strikes-gold-worth-9m-while-digging-sewers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Belgian TV station VTM<\/a>. \u201cAt first I thought it was \u20ac1 coins. So we started digging them up. Then we saw a gold bar. It turned out to be a bit more than we thought.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hoard, which comprises gold coins, nuggets and numbered bullion bars, is worth an estimated \u20ac9 million.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786736415_432_.jpeg\"  alt=\"gold 3\" class=\"alignnone inline-image\" \/><br \/>\n                                Denmark police social media.<\/p>\n<p>    Denmark police social media.\n<\/p>\n<p>The students were working on the site of a former brewery on Van Langenhovestraat, about 19 miles (30km) north-west of Brussels, when they came across the stash on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Construction company De Brand was carrying out excavation and demolition work for a sewage system.<\/p>\n<p>The gold was stashed in a bag in a bricked-in cellar wall beneath the villa originally built for the brewery\u2019s owner.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786736416_749_.jpeg\"  alt=\"gold 2\" class=\"alignnone inline-image\" \/><br \/>\n                                Denmark police social media<\/p>\n<p>    Denmark police social media\n<\/p>\n<p>Kobe told VTM that he suspected that the treasure was deliberately hidden there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cApparently there used to be a cellar, which they filled in later. And the gold was really bricked in there, not in a safe or anything, so I think it really was hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also said that the discovery came as a \u201cshock\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is something you don\u2019t expect when you\u2019re just working on Tuesday morning. It\u2019s a shock, but you also know that you have to hand it over, such a big find.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They called the police and notified the building owner, and the police subsequently took the stash. But following the remarkable find, Kobe says he is hoping for a handsome reward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BELGIAN STUDENTS HAVE struck gold after unearthing a stash of the precious metal while conducting an excavation near&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[6055,9,10,22261,197594,269349,269350,18,13,14,1742,269351,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,6833,90219,1420,7,8,269352],"class_list":["post-637395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-belgium","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-brussels","tag-builders","tag-construction-firm","tag-de-brand","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-gold","tag-gold-diggers","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-renovation","tag-stash","tag-students","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-what-a-find"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}