Customer bites into a 'shell' while eating $14 seafood dish. Then, he realized it was a $16,000 fortune

People have come across treasures at thrift stores and even their backyards, but biting into a fortune while having a meal certainly makes up for dessert. A man who was on vacation with his family in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware found something unexpected in his clam dish while savoring seafood. Scott Overland, the vice president of the Phoenixville School Board who was eating out at Salt Air restaurant, wrote "I was the one mostly eating the clams and towards the end of the dish, I just chomp down on something that felt kind of hard,” said Overland. "I thought it was a shell or something like that, but then looked and it was this little purple thing," according to Today Food. 

At first, the family thought that they were looking at something that the chef had accidentally dropped in their dish. However, upon looking closely, they realize that they had found something unique because of the color. The man also mentioned how he never knew clams actually contained pearls, which he thought were mostly found in an oyster’s milieu. The fact is that all mollusks can technically make pearls however only freshwater mussels are used to commercially grow the kind of pearls that later become precious.

According to reports, the clam that it came from is a northern quahog called Mercenaria, which usually produces porcelain-like pearls according to the Gemological Institute of America. Only one in 5,000 quahogs creates a pearl, due to the extreme process of harvesting, shucking, steaming, and cooking it.

"If it’s appraised at a certain value, it may be hard to justify keeping it, but I have a six-year-old daughter who I’m sure would love to have it,” Overland said.“We might try to turn it into something so we can have a special family heirloom. That, or I have to keep eating clams and find a second one if I want to turn it into earrings," he added.

The prices of these pearls depend on a lot of factors according to the International Gem Society, which further mentioned how the natural pearls which are gold, pink, blue, brown, and purple in color are especially rare and precious. While the dish only cost him around  $14, the pearl could be worth anything between $600 to $16,000.

"My wife is not a big fan of peppers, so we actually ordered it without that," Overland said. "It came (with the pico) and my wife was deciding whether or not to send it back. She decided to keep it, fortunately, otherwise, we would not have had this whole experience."

Overland also said how the restaurant was a good sport about it when they found out. "As we were paying, I showed the waitress and she was really excited," Overland mentioned, adding that she took a few selfies with it herself and proudly announced the find to her co-workers. "As we were leaving, we heard her telling all the other servers, 'My customer just found a pearl in his clam!' She seemed really excited about it."