On Monday, the discovery of an unidentified lump on a Wellington beach sparked rumours it was the sought-after sperm whale excretion, ambergris, used to make perfume.
While eager Wellingtonian treasure hunters reduced the large mystery mass to nothing, a Queenstown man began his own treasure hunt.
Unearthing several of his wife's family photographs, Mr Smillie found pictures of an 85kg lump of ambergris which had been discovered lying on a beach near Otara, Southland in 1928.
The find paid off for the three, Fred Ericson, brother Frank and their brother-in-law Bill Blair, earning them £8000 from a French perfume company for their trouble.
After expenses were deducted, the budding farmers each earned 2400, enough to buy their own farms.
The men are now dead.
Mr Smillie has researched and written about the large ambergris find, with the hope of publishing a collection.
He said the ambergris was stored at the Invercargill Bank of New Zealand in a vault until it was shipped off.
"It was certainly the discovery of a lifetime," he said.
One of only a handful of ambergris merchants in the country, Adrienne Beuse, said it was impossible to put a figure on a find of that size.
"It would just flood the market," she said.
Fetching around $10 a gram, a golf ball-sized lump of ambergris could earn the finder about $500.
It would often end up as high-end perfume, or be used as an aphrodisiac in the Middle East and Asia.
The Dargaville-based dealer had been involved in the industry for eight years, and she had fielded many emails yesterday from eager Wellington residents who had broken bits off the washed-up mass.
"As soon as I saw it, I thought 'that is a recipe for disappointment'."
The Wellington find was likely to be tallow.
"We get a lot of these type of by-product finds in New Zealand," she said.
Out of every 100 people who contacted her business saying they had discovered ambergris, "99 would be wrong".
"But if you find some, it can be worth your while."
Mrs Beuse said she had heard of discoveries similar to the Otara one, and with New Zealand ambergris viewed as being the best in the world it could "earn the finder a lot of money".
New Zealand was one of the best places to find ambergris, with exposed coastlines such as Stewart Island, Southland and the West Coast among some of the best spots.
"It is always worth keeping an eye out for," she said.
