Boy Finds Whale Vomit Worth Thousands

One whale's upset stomach is about to make an 8-year-old boy in Britain a tidy little profit. The youth found two solidified clumps of whale vomit on a beach, reports Global Post. And as any reader who made it to chapter 92 of Moby Dick remembers, that's valuable stuff. Perfume makers in particular prize the waxy substance, which is called ambergris and used as a fixative in the making of pretty scents.

Young Charlie Naysmith found about a pound of it, and his family thinks it could be worth about $60,000. That could be overshooting the estimate by a lot, maybe a factor of 10, according to stats rounded up by NBC, but even a few thousand for whale vomit isn't a bad deal. The family is waiting to hear back from marine biologists on its quality. (More strange stuff stories.)