Lucky man who hoarded ‘gold’ for years shocked to discover it’s something far rarer

It rocked his world.

A metal-detecting man was floored to realize the rock he uncovered and believed to be gold was actually from space.

Incredibly dense for its size at almost 40 pounds, finder Dave Hole of Australia was convinced it must have contained a nugget of the precious metal. However, not even a mighty swing of his sledgehammer could put a dent in the rock.

Hole told The Syndey Morning Herald he thought, “What the hell is this thing?” at the time of his 2015 find.

After taking his rock to the Melbourne Museum for analysis, it became clear this was no Earthly object.

Instead, Hole discovered a roughly 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite, which the experts determined in 2019.

“You’re looking right back to the formation of the solar system here,” geologist Dermot Henry told the outlet.

He detailed that the rock — classified in a scientific paper as an H5 ordinary chondrite — has a “sculpted, dimpled look” that took shape after breaking through Earth’s atmosphere.

It is now nicknamed the Maryborough meteorite after the town Hole had uncovered the otherworldly mass. Henry says it likely only came to Earth a mere 200 years ago or less.

“This particular meteorite most probably comes out of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it’s been nudged out of there by some asteroids smashing into each other, then one day it smashes into Earth,” Henry told Channel 10 News, according to Science Alert.

And its discoverer recognizes he struck gold — from a certain point of view.

“It was just potluck, mate. A billion to one – bigger, a trillion to one,” said Hole. “Got more chance of being struck by lightning twice.”