Thieves ransacked Romanian woman’s home, stole jewellery but missed a 70-million-year-old amber ‘rock’ kept as a doorstop for decades, worth $1 million

In a quiet village in rural Romania, an elderly woman had been using a heavy, golden-coloured rock to hold her front door open for years. To her, it was simply a useful, albeit unusual-looking, stone. The 7.7-pound reddish rock served as a doorstop in her home in northern Romania. When burglars later broke into her house, they stole her jewellery but left the heavy stone behind, unaware that it could be worth around $1 million. After the woman died in 1991, tests revealed that the seemingly ordinary rock was actually a piece of fossilised resin dating back up to 70 million years. The “doorstop” was a 7.7-pound chunk of raw amber, making it one of the largest such specimens ever found. The valuable stone was kept lying in the house for decades.

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The history of the ‘doorstop’ amber stone

According to a report by Futura Sciences, the woman had picked up the stone from a stream bed near Colți, a small village in Romania’s Buzău County. The area lies in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, where natural erosion can expose deposits of raw amber. After the woman died in 1991, a relative inherited the house and began to suspect that the unusually heavy rock could be more than an ordinary river stone. Romanian state authorities eventually acquired the object and sent it to specialists at the History Museum in Kraków, Poland.


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Polish experts confirmed that the specimen was genuine amber and estimated its age at between 38.5 million and 70 million years. Weighing 7.7 pounds, or 3.5 kilograms, the amber ranks among the largest intact nuggets ever discovered. The specimen is now housed at the Buzău County Museum as a protected national treasure and has been on display since 2022.

News reports have often put its estimated value at 1 million euros, or roughly $1.1 million. However, museum director Daniel Costache has noted that while market estimates exist, the specimen’s scientific and cultural importance is difficult to put a price on.

From ancient tree resin to household doorstop

Amber forms when sticky resin released by ancient trees becomes buried in sediment and gradually hardens through chemical changes over millions of years. Resin is different from tree sap. While sap transports water and nutrients through a tree, resin acts as a natural defence system, helping seal wounds in the bark and protect the tree from insects and disease.

In the Buzău region, ancient coniferous forests are believed to have produced large amounts of this protective resin. Over geological time, rivers carried the hardened material into sedimentary beds, creating rich amber deposits around Colți. Local amber mining has been documented in the area since the 1920s.

Locals call the regional amber chihlimbar, while mineralogists refer to it as rumanite, a variety classified by geologist Oscar Helm to distinguish it from other types of amber. Unlike the lighter Baltic varieties, rumanite is known for its deep red, brown and almost black shades.

Why the giant amber has scientific value

The specimen’s enormous size makes it particularly significant, as most pieces of raw amber discovered in nature weigh only a few grams. Large pieces of fossilised resin can also preserve clues about prehistoric environments.

Inclusions: Amber can trap ancient insects, plant spores and air bubbles, preserving them in three dimensions.

Geological clues: Chemical signatures in amber can help researchers study the trees, environments and climates of ancient Europe.

Exceptional preservation: Unlike many fossils that become flattened under layers of rock, amber can preserve organic material without the same kind of compression.

Some reports have described the specimen as the world’s largest rumanite nugget. However, museum officials have avoided relying on unofficial record claims, instead highlighting its verified geological authenticity. The museum has also not published a complete analysis of any internal inclusions within the former doorstop.