Tank fan finds £2 million of gold bars in Iraqi army vehicle he bought off eBay
Mark Dorman
Yahoo Finance UK11 April 2017
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Nick Mead (pictured) and his mechanic Todd Chamberlain found the bars in an old Russian tank (SWNS)
The next time you buy a used vehicle, it would be well worth checking the glove box and under the seats.
However, while you might come across a few loose coins, the chances of having the same luck as Nick Mead would be slim to none.
Nick is an avid collector of old military vehicles and his latest buy – a £30,000 Russian T54/69 tank purchased off eBay – concealed a lucrative secret.
While restoring the tank, Nick and mechanic Todd Chamberlain stumbled across five gold bars hidden in the fuel tank. At a rough estimate the bars are worth £2 million.
“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,” Nick Mead told The Sun.
Nick has about 150 military vehicles in his collection at Tanks-a-Lot in Northamptonshire. He traded in an army lorry and an Abbot self-propelled gun in a deal worth about £30,000 after seeing the T54/69 advertised on eBay.
The pair had already found machine gun ammunition while stripping down the tank.
They believe the gold was looted by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Nick, 55, added: “They must have cut a hole in the fuel tank and rammed it full of gold bars.”
Police have taken the bars away for examination… but did give Nick a receipt.
no.1 photo: View photos
Todd Chamberlain with four of the five gold bars removed from the fuel tank (Tanks-a-Lot/Facebook)
