As reality shows go, History’s “The Curse of Oak Island” has a genuinely enticing premise. The show focuses on Rick and Marty Lagina, who have made their base on the titular mysterious island, which as a shady history and many legends about hidden treasure — both in the legendary, reputedly booby-trapped “money pit,” and elsewhere on the island.
The show’s already on its Season 9, and as fans are all too well aware of, the brothers and their team haven’t found any life-altering riches quite yet. Still, it seems that there’s something hidden on the island. They’ve made some pretty big discoveries, as well as some pretty mysterious ones — such as some peculiar human bones. However, the fandom doesn’t always buy what the show is selling, and things like the show’s recent discovery of a supposed stone road has fans divided. Likewise, another recent “The Curse of Oak Island” find has fans side-eyeing Marty in particular.
Some fans aren’t buying the ‘gold object’ discovery
The discovery of a particular, mysterious metal object has some fans up in arms, since an in-depth analysis reveals that the largely iron object contains a tiny trace amount of gold, which Marty immediately homes in on.
“It’s driving me batty that the tiny scrap of iron they dug up (the one with the single microscopic fragment of gold that can only be seen with an electron microscope) is now being referred to as ‘the gold object’,” one viewer wrote in a Reddit discussion about the object. “A human hair is about 60 micron in diameter as a reference. So they found a flake of gold that is about 1/3 the diameter of a human hair. TREASURE!!!!” another redditor waxed sarcastic.
Other fans stuck their neck out for Marty and defended his view. “”Marty said it was tumbaga and the metallurgical breakdown was 65% gold. I’d say when something is 2/3 of something, you can call it that thing,” a third redditor chimed in. However, others still pointed out that while one tiny speck of the otherwise iron object might be mostly gold, that doesn’t really warrant discussion about a “gold object.”
Of course, it’s understandable that the Laginas feel good about the discovery of gold — no matter how minuscule the amount — considering that they’ve been searching the island for such a long time. Who knows? Maybe the next object they find is entirely golden … but until then, fans are likely to raise their eyebrows at such terminology.