A British teenager has found some of the rarest LEGO pieces that fell off a boat in 1997

After a two-year search on British beaches, a 13-year-old boy picked up an extremely rare Lego piece that fell from a dumpster off the coast of Cornwall in 1997.

A 13-year-old boy was walking along the beach with his parents when he unexpectedly found a piece of Lego. A tiny, extremely rare black plastic octopus has washed up on the coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom. A casualty of a container ship hit by a wave In February 1997.

“He was looking for 2 years. (…) we didn't expect to find it there because it's so rare,” Liuteras Semolonskas' father told local press, happy to have found it. British media including Guardian Or Sky NewsThe news reports that they found this rare piece of plastic on the coast of Marathion in the south west of England.

5 million Lego pieces were lost in 1997

After the accident, thousands of Lego pieces wash up on the Cornish coastline every year, attracting the interest of collectors such as Liudaras Semalonskas and his family.

During these two years, the young man, who was interested in searching for things, collected many fossils and almost 800 Lego pieces that were washed into the sea after the accident, among the 5 million that fell into the water.

But this fragment is considered the “holy grail” of this marine disaster. In fact, of the 5 million pieces that fell into the water, there were only 4,200 examples of this black octopus, compared to 352,000 pairs of tiny plastic flippers, 97,500 diving tanks and 92,400 miniature swords.

A second piece was found shortly after

But the magic of this invention doesn't stop there A second black octopus was spotted by another passerby Two days after Liuturas Cemolonskas was discovered. A man named Justin Goode told object detector Tracey Williams that he came across these small pieces of plastic by chance.

“After taking a few steps on the sand” at Portlevan Sands, I spotted an octopus at the end of a piece of seaweed left by high tide, Walker says, “and managed to collect a full garbage bag of small plastic debris for the next 4-5 hours: “water bottles, fishing line, pieces of netting, bottle caps. , packaging…”

Author Tracy Williams is the creator of the “Lego Lost at Sea Project”. For years he has been collecting Lego pieces that were washed up at sea after the 1997 disaster. In 2023 he was able to exhibit many of his discoveries at the Royal Cornwall Museum. She now has a Facebook account List the latest findings in this area.