The surprising discovery of three jars of jam filled with gold bars and hundreds of gold coins in an old building marked for renovation left a mountain community in eastern France perplexed and celebrated.
The mayor of Morez, a small industrial town in a picturesque valley in the Jura, said the value of the discovery was more than 600,000 euros (£ 520,000). City Hall staff first found three jars of 500,000-euro gold and coin jams behind a dusty shelf, then opened a safe hidden behind boxes in a closet to find up to 150,000 euros in gold coins.
The mayor, Laurent Petit, said the three-story building in the city center was inhabited by four childrenless brothers and sisters. When he last died in the 1990s, a relative offered to sell the town hall building for 130,000 euros. Morez, like many other cities in France, sought to buy and renovate old buildings to attract families back to its emptying center.
“The house was full of objects and furniture,” Petit said. “There were several generations that did not throw anything away, kept everything and lived very frugally. We agreed that we would buy the property as it was and gradually empty the contents ourselves. ”
When Covid-19 struck last spring and France was closed, eastern France was hit hard and plans for workers to tidy up the building were suspended. But Morez, near the Swiss border, had a glorious past as a historic manufacturing center for watches and glasses, and officials wanted to check if any items were of historical interest.
Senior staff, including the mayor, the head of services and the head of the local museum entered. They followed the rules of social distance, taking one floor at a time, and carefully sorting through boxes and cabinets.
“Three jars full of gold bars stood behind many other objects on a shelf,” the mayor said. “It simply came to our notice then. None of us had ever held a piece of gold. I had only seen gold bars in the photos and I thought they must be huge. But they were small, weighing 1 kg and the size of a pack of cigarettes. ”
The five gold bars and more than 1,000 gold coins were estimated at EUR 500,000.
The second discovery, which Petit announced at a surprise city council meeting this week, came recently when a safe found behind a closet behind cardboard boxes was opened to find hundreds of others. gold coins worth up to € 150,000. He said it was impossible to know exactly who in the family – involved in Morez’s watch and eyewear industry – first made a fortune.
Petit said the elderly relative who sold the house is stoic about the discovery, which now belongs to the town hall. The salesman had heard family rumors about hidden treasures, but he didn’t think he was still there. “He was very philosophical – he had heard of a gold reserve, but he thought it was given.”
The discovery is small compared to the city’s annual budget of 6 million euros, but will be spent on a special public project that has not yet been decided.
Petit said, “I can’t say he turned us into Las Vegas in the Jura, but he made us smile.”