I’m still flabbergasted as I’m writing this. First, that this story involves a tank collector. And second, that he found gold bars in an old tank that totaled about $2.5 million dollars at today’s exchange rates.


Nick Mead, who runs Tanks-A-Lot in the United Kingdom, a company that offers armored vehicles including tanks for driving classes, TV and movies and private events, bought an ex-Iraqi Army Type 69 tank on eBay, according to Popular Mechanics. You know, as you do.

But the biggest surprise lay within: upon opening one of the tank’s diesel fuel tanks, he and his mechanic discovered gold bars totaling about £2 million, reports The Daily Mail. That’s almost $2.5 million.


The five gold bars are believed to have been looted by Iraqi soldiers during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Mail reports. Mead had found machine gun ammo while stripping the Type 69 down and was worried that guns were hidden inside the fuel tank, so he filmed the operation to have proof just in case anyone came asking questions.

After discovering the gold, Mead told The Sun, “We didn’t know what to do. You can’t exactly take five gold bullion bars down to Cash Converters without questions being asked, so we called the police.”

The police gave them a receipt, though, so that was nice.

As amazing as this story is, I’m also laughing because I’m imagining the reaction soldiers who allegedly hid the gold had when they discovered that it was gone.


I suppose the moral of this story is to buy tanks?