This 2017 Army Tank Purchased From eBay Had $2.4M Of Treasure Hidden Inside

Some people collect baseball cards. Others collect porcelain figurines. Nick Mead, however, has a penchant for collecting old military vehicles and tanks — and not just a few. In fact, Mead's collection is so massive, he gave over 60 of them — including a six-wheeled Pinzgauer Vector utility vehicle, 35 Spartan armored personnel carriers, and 25 armored Land Rovers – to the Ukrainian Army in its fight against Russia. By 2023, the number of his donations had increased to over 100.

Mead owns a company called Tanks-alot, which lets people drive around in an assortment of armored vehicles and tanks. He also provides them to television production companies for use in shows and films, and they can even be rented for private events. Believe it or not, it is legal for civilians to buy and own a tank if certain conditions are met. Back in 2017, Mead purchased one of the many Chinese Type 69 tanks previously used by the Iraqi Army off eBay for $37,000. These tanks were based on the Russian T-55 and equipped with a 12.7-millimeter machine gun and a 100-millimeter main gun while in service.

Once received, Mead and his mechanic, Todd Chamberlain, got to work inspecting it. Part of their standard operating procedure was to film this in case they stumbled across anything hidden on board. They'd already discovered bullets, and Chamberlain thought he might have found the associated guns hidden inside the fuel tank. Instead, Mead filmed Chamberlain reaching inside and pulling out not one but five gold bars, each weighing roughly 12.5 pounds. Oddly, the total haul of nearly 70 pounds of gold was reported with different values, with some sources claiming it was $2.4 million while others put it at only $1.4 million.

To remain transparent and avoid any legal problems, they turned the gold over to the authorities. According to reports, the police gave them a receipt, which Nick Mead stashed in a safe deposit box. Unfortunately, that's all they got for their troubles because the gold's provenance was never accounted for, and its whereabouts are still unknown. In an interview, Mead told The Daily Mail that he "regrets," at the very least, not receiving a finder's fee for his honesty.

On the Tanks-alot website, Mead theorized that the gold could have come from Kuwait. Following Iraq's invasion there in August 1990, soldiers went on a looting spree and stole thousands of bars of gold. Once the Gulf War was over, Iraq's government returned 3,216 of them. Mead implied that it could be possible that these five bars had been in the tank since then, although all of that gold was reportedly returned in 1991. 

Interestingly, a 2017 Popular Mechanics article also notes a disparity, stating that the amount of gold reportedly found would've only been worth $1.2 million with the price of gold at the time, instead of the $2.4 million or $1.4 million that others suggested. Of course, the price of gold fluctuates, which could be the cause of this discrepancy. Regardless, they certainly stumbled across quite the treasure.