Gold bars of different sizes are displayed at the Austrian Gold and Silver Refinery (Oegussa) in Vienna, Austria, on February 3, 2026. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP via Getty Images) / Austria OUTAPA/AFP via Getty ImagesWhat did you do this summer? One Belgian student who struck gold this week while digging a sewer on a summer construction job, is now waiting to see who claims the stash, after an ordinary Tuesday morning on the job turned out to be anything but. Kobe, 18, was working on the renovation of a former brewery in the town of Dendermonde, about 18 miles north of Brussels, Belgium when he noticed what he thought was a few €1 coins lying in the dirt. He continued to dig and eventually unearthed a stash of numbered gold bullion bars and coins, which has since been valued at over $10.4 million. “It turned out to be worth a bit more than we thought,” he told the Belgian news network VTM.The student, whose full identity has not been released for his own safety, was in the first week of his annual summer construction job with De Brand. He made the discovery at 8:15am on an otherwise normal Tuesday morning, while digging down to the foundations to lay pipes for a sewage system. “At first, we had our doubts [as to whether it was real gold], but then we saw the numbers and realized pretty quickly that it was the real thing,” the student worker said to another Belgian network, VRT NWS.According to his site manager, the stash was wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden inside a bricked-in basement wall in a villa originally built for the brewery’s owner, one Theophilus van Assche, in the late 1800s. “Apparently 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,” Kobe told VTM.Historic buildings which surround the main Market Place (Grote Markt) in Dendermonde, the town in East Flanders, Belgium, where the gold was found.gettyMORE FOR YOUA local historian and former mayor of the town, Piet Buyse, believes the gold likely belongs to the Van Assche brewery family. Located in the center of the East Flemish town, the brewery was in use from 1899 up until 1970, and the once-grand Brouwershuis is now a listed building. De Brand is working to renovate the site into offices and housing for the Belgian social welfare organization CAW Oost-Vlaanderen, which hopes to be able to use the gold for the good of the local community.The haul was immediately handed over to the police and is now held securely in Brussels while the case is investigated to find out where it comes from, and who the legal owner is. Under Belgian law, anyone who makes a valuable find must wait for five years for any potential owners or claimants to come forwards, after which it can be divided between the finder and property owner as long as it isn’t criminal money. Kobe told the Brussels Times that he was assuming he wouldn’t have a reward for finding the hoard, but will no doubt be following with interest. “If we did, that would be a nice bonus”.