As the lockdown has become increasingly tedious for parents with kids, a French businessman who tried to occupy his kids by asking them to build a backyard tent has struck gold quite literally.
When the coronavirus pandemic struck urban France, a French businessman in his early 60s moved his family to his family home in the town of Vendôme, south-west of Paris, where they had been living. In order to keep his kids engaged, he asked them to build a tent in their backyard using his grandmother’s old sheets. What started off as an innocent search in a spare room turned out to be a fortune.
While they pulled the sheets out of the shelves, they found two bars that they presumed to be knife holders. When they showed these ‘knife holders’ to their father, he realised they were gold bars, intact with the receipt, purchased by his grandmother back in 1967.
He contacted Mr Phillipe Rouillac’s company, a local auctioneer, to double-check and, after sending a few photographs, he was told the good news. Both bars are now listed on the auctioneer’s website with an estimated value of 40,000 euros apiece.
Moreover, the price of gold has increased due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We are going to wait for the price of gold to rise a little more,” Mr Rouillac said. “They could get at least 100,000 euros.”
The kids however were not ready to let go until they were given assurances of a pool at their house.