13-year-old boy discovers rare LEGO treasure in the ocean

A rare LEGO octopus, that fell into the ocean over 25 years ago, has been discovered by a teenage boy on a beach in the United Kingdom.

13-year-old boy, Liutauras Cemolonskas, found the plastic octopus on a sandy beach in Marazion, an idyllic coastal town located in Cornwall, England.

However, it wasn’t by pure chance that the teen and his family stumbled across the “holy grail” of LEGO discoveries. “We’ve been looking for that octopus for two years, it’s not easy to find,” his dad, Vytautas Cemolonskas, said.

It became a rare LEGO treasure after the Tokio Express cargo ship lost 62 of its containers into the ocean in 1997, which lead to close to five million LEGO figurines and pieces being dumped.

The avid LEGO hunter and his family have racked up 789 pieces from the famous 1990s cargo ship and several fossils in total. But, the Octopus is the rarest of them all, as there were only 4,200 octopuses on board, compared to 352,000 flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords.

Tracey Williams, who runs the Lego Lost At Sea project, has been searching for the missing LEGO pieces ever since they fell into the ocean following the freak wave that blasted them off the ship.

Despite Williams discovering one of the LEGO octopuses in 1997, she was only able to find another, 18 years later. “I think there’s something quite magical about the octopuses,” she said and added: “They’re often seen as the holy grail of finds from that shipping container.”

Liutauras has no signs of stopping after his rare discovery and has revealed that his next goal is to try and find one of the 33,941 LEGO dragons that also fell into the sea as a result of the incident.