Urban Miner scrapes over £600 worth of precious metals from cracks in London pavements

The Sunday Telegraph has collected quantities of the precious metal from cracks in the pavements outside the capital's most famous jewellers.

Our quest was inspired by 43-year-old New Yorker Raffi Stepanian, who crawls around on the sidewalks of Manhattan's "diamond district" looking for chips of gemstones and tiny pieces of gold.

The "urban miner" claimed last week to have collected a haul worth roughly $1,000 (£620) over the course of a fortnight – mostly gold fragments which are thought to rub off the clothes or shoes of jewellery workers.

The pieces can be so small that they are only recoverable when Mr Stepanian pans the scraped-up dirt using a bowl of water, like a nineteenth-century prospector.

Full story at the Telegraph