One minute, you’re minding your own business, working outside your house building a coffin, and the next minute a smoking meteorite worth a small fortune hurtles through the roof of your veranda and winds up buried in the earth next to your living room.

Facebook

It wasn’t a typical day, but that’s exactly what happened to a 33-year-old Indonesian coffin maker named Josua Hutagalung. “I was working on a coffin near the street in front of my house when I heard a booming sound that made my house shake. It was as if a tree had fallen on us,” the father of three told the Sun. “[The meteorite] was too hot to pick up so my wife dug it out with a hoe and we took it inside.”

Weighing in at roughly 4.5 pounds, the 4 billion-year-old meteorite was later classified as the extremely rare CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite variety.

In the space-rock market, it sells for $850 per gram. When you do the math, that’s roughly $1,858,556 of ka-ching!

As soon as news of the incident went public, American space rock guru Jared Collins hopped on a plane to Sumatra to purchase the precious cargo. After fielding a crazy number of offers, Collins sold the extra-terrestrial treasure to Indianapolis-based meteorite collector Dr. Jay Piateck, who mailed it for safe-keeping to the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University (where it’s currently being stored in liquid nitrogen).

LOOK: Box of Stained Glass Bought at Auction Solves 80-year Mystery of Church Windows Gone Missing During WWII

While Hutagalung won’t reveal the exact dollar amount he wound up accepting for his 4.5-pound chunk of outer-space booty, guesstimates range well in excess of a million bucks.

With his new-found fortune, Hutagalung says he plans to help build a church for his community. He’s also got a more personal wish. Money can’t buy it, but he’s optimistic that his streak of good fortune hasn’t run its full course just yet.

“I have always wanted a daughter, and I hope this is a sign that I will be lucky enough now to have one,” he said.

As far as signs go, wishing on a meteorite might not be the same as wishing on a shooting star, but, odds are, having been singled out by meteor manna from heaven may go a long way toward upping those odds considerably. Here’s hoping they do.

WATCH the video taken by Josua…

POPULAR: Blind, Deaf Senior Dog Found in Good Health Just 28 Hours After Being Carried Off By a Hawk

SHARE The Hunk of Burning Luck on Social Media…

2 COMMENTS

Leave a Reply