Looking under sofa cushions can often find you a treasure of crumbs, candy and kroner and if you’re the owner of a scrap company in China, apparently that means finding thousands of coins adding up to a small fortune.

Last year a Chinese man had tried to exchange a slew of 20 kroner coins adding up to 75,000 kroner. At the time the coins were thought to be fake, reports Jyllands-Posten.

However, shortly before Christmas, the case took a turn when it was discovered that the coins were genuine after consulting a scrap company in Zealand.

Loose change
The Chinese man claimed that the coins were left over from scrap bought from Denmark. The scrap was smelted and in the slag, the stony material that is left over, there were tons of coins.

The director of the Zealand company that was consulted tells the newspaper that the temperature is not high enough to melt the metal in the coins, so after the scrap is burned, the coins survive.

“You have probably had a 20 in your pocket and then it’s suddenly gone,” the director told Jyllands-Posten. “You’ve been sleeping on the couch and then it slipped out and settled between the cushions.”

The director did not say how much loose change is found in the scrap, but explains that Chinese scrap companies find coins from all over the world and try to get it exchanged, saying there is nothing “dishonest” about the endeavour.