A Whale Vomit is Worth £50,000

A British man has been offered 50,000 euros for a
strange-smelling rock his dog found on a beach, which
is likely a rare form of whale vomit used in perfumes,
the BBC reported Thursday.
Ken Wilman was walking his dog Madge in the coastal
town of Morecambe in northwest England when she
began "póking at a rather large stone" with a waxy
texture and yellowish colour.
At first he left it on the beach, but "something triggered
in my mind", Wilman said, prompting him to go back
and retrieve the object, which he believes is a piece of
ambergris, a substance found in the digestive systems of
spérm whales.
Whales sometimes spew up ambergris, which floats on
water and has been highly prized for centuries. It is
used in perfume-making for the musky fragrance it
acquires as it ages — but newer ambergris is foul-
smelling.
"When I picked it up and smelled it I put it back down
again and I thought 'urgh'," Wilman told the BBC. "It
has a musky smell, but the more you smell it the nicer
the smell becomes."
He is waiting for tests to confirm his find is ambergris,
nicknamed "floating gold", but says he has been offered
50,000 euros (£43,000, $68,000) for it by a French
dealer.
"It's worth so much because of its particular
properties," Andrew Kitchener, principal curator of
vertebrates at the National Museum of Scotland, told
the broadcaster. "It's a very important base for
perfumes and it's hard to find any artificial substitute
for it."
The substance gets a mention in the classic 1851
whaling novel Moby man-hood, where author Herman
Melville writes: "Who would think, then, that such fine
ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an
essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale!
Yet so it is."