Teenager Finds Rare LEGO Figure That's Been Missing for 27 Years

gamerant.com:

A teenager recently uncovered a rare LEGO octopus minifigure that was lost for the past 27 years. In 1997, a cargo ship containing thousands of LEGO pieces was caught in a storm 20 miles off Land’s End, Cornwall. This resulted in nearly five million LEGO pieces falling into the sea, with many of them being related to pirate or ocean exploration-based sets of the time.

One of the rarest and most sought-after pieces from the infamous spill was the black LEGO octopus figure, which has been included in about 14 sets across several different themes including LEGO’s own “Aquazone” and “Alpha Team” lines in addition to one licensed LEGO Harry Potter set back in 2005. Only 4,200 octopus figures were onboard the now-infamous cargo ship, and very few of them have been recovered as of this writing.

One tiny plastic Cephalopod was recently uncovered on a beach in Marazion, England by a young boy named Liutauras Cemolonskas earlier this month, as reported by The Guardian. He found the rare black LEGO octopus during a regular fishing trip with his parents, though his father told the PA Media news agency that they had been looking for the figure for the past two years. According to him, Liutauras was happy to find the rare LEGO octopus after such a long search, having already collected 789 other pieces alongside a few fossils.

The lost octopus figure is just a small part of the vast assortment of LEGO pieces scattered by the late 90s shipping accident, which also included 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords. The story would inspire beachcomber Tracey Williams to start the LEGO Lost at Sea project, which has been dedicated to locating the hidden LEGO pieces. Williams herself discovered an octopus figure way back in 1997, and then another one in 2015. She says that the octopuses are considered to be the “holy grail” of findings from the lost shipping container.

All of this makes Liutauras Cemolonskas’s discovery of a rare LEGO mini-figure during a