Nick Mead, 62, is a heavy military enthusiast who lives on a farm in Helmden, Northamptonshire.
(Nick Meade)
Because of his love for military weapons and military vehicles, Nick decided to pursue his hobby as a career, and started a tank driving experience called Tanks-ALot on the farm.
(Nick & Tank)
He collected more than 150 tanks and military vehicles from all over the world, and set up the largest tank test drive camp in the United Kingdom, and the business is quite prosperous...
(Nick's Tank Workshop)
But Nick has been plagued by a very remorseful incident lately...
Six years ago, Nick was still in the start-up stage, buying military vehicles and preparing to create a luxury fleet of 300 military vehicles.
He saw a sale on eBay about a man named Joe Hughes selling a 36.7-ton tank.
Joe Hughes is a self-taught mechanic with 7 years of experience in modifying and restoring military vehicles. It is said that this tank was built in the early 80s of the 20th century and actually had a mileage of 1507 miles.
(Joe Hughes)
The tank was bought by Joe Hughes without engines and tracks, and Joe reinstalled it to keep it running.
Nick was very impressed by the tank, he swiped eBay twice in three days to check the sale information of the tank, the market price of the tank usually ranges from 10,000 pounds to 60,000 pounds, and Joe is priced at 30,000 pounds, which is considered a great value for money...
So, after negotiation between the two sides, Nick exchanged a military truck and an Abbott self-propelled gun for this tank...
(Joe Hughes sells commercial)
After receiving the tank, Nick called the mechanic Todd Chamberlain to disassemble and repair it together, knowing that the tank had been modified by Joe Hughes, and he didn't expect any surprising discoveries at first, until they stumbled upon the machine gun ammunition left behind...
Todd reminds Nick that he thinks one of the tanks might also have a gun, and the two decide to take a picture of the operation while checking the tank...
Surprisingly, there are no weapons, but there are treasures...
Nick found five giant gold bars weighing 5 kilograms each in the diesel tank, and the estimated value of these gold bars was around £2 million, which was undoubtedly a huge amount of money falling from the sky.
(Nick & Gold Bars)
When Nick and the others first discovered the gold bars, everyone fell into the illusion of getting rich overnight, thinking that they could use this wealth to fulfill their wishes.
Nick's sister wants to buy a Land Rover, he wants a Rolls-Royce Phantom himself, and then chops off the rear of the car to make a pickup truck...
But Nick soon sobered up...
After all, he can't go to the pawnshop with five gold bars, it's too ostentatious, and at the end of the last century, a South African mining company developed a gold "fingerprint" identification technique that can accurately find out where a gold product was mined, and since then, all the stolen gold has been traced.
In the end, Nick chose to call the police...
The Northamptonshire Police Department sent two officers to take the gold bars, but instead of cashing the corresponding £2 million, they handed him a receipt for the gold bars.
At the time, it was in the news...
(DM News Screenshot)
The police initially suspected that the gold bars were "stolen goods" looted by Iraqi soldiers during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but were forgotten in the tank.
When the police got their hands on the gold bars, they began to track them down, contacting Kuwait to try to find out if the bars matched those stolen during the Iraqi invasion in August '90.
But in the blink of an eye, six years have passed...
Now, six years later, Nick, who watched the gold bars being taken away, has not yet waited for an explanation, but he bluntly says that he regrets his decision back then...
He wanted to keep these "trophies" hidden in the tanks, he regretted handing over this huge sum of money, feeling that he deserved at least a bonus, but he actually got nothing ...
That receipt is still kept by Nick in a safe in London, and maybe one day, the gold bars will be returned to Nick, maybe never...
The experience of £2 million slipping through your fingertips isn't something that everyone has...