There's a man named Raffi Stepanian who mines diamonds and gold from New York City sidewalks, making over $600 in one week.
NYC's Urban Prospector Mines Gold from Sidewalk Cracks
While most New Yorkers walk past the grimy sidewalk cracks without a second thought, Raffi Stepanian saw a literal goldmine beneath his feet. For over four years, this Queens native earned between $100 and $930 per week by scraping precious metals and gemstones from the expansion joints in Manhattan's Diamond District sidewalks.
The discovery happened by chance. A freelance diamond setter with 26+ years in the jewelry business, Stepanian found a piece of gold on the sidewalk outside a 47th Street jewelry exchange. That single find sparked an obsession that would turn city blocks into his personal claim.
The 60-Year Buildup Nobody Noticed
The Diamond District isn't just famous—it's messy. Jewelers, cutters, and setters track microscopic fragments of their work everywhere they go. Tiny gold links cling to shoe treads. Diamond chips embed in coat sleeves. Ruby fragments stick to briefcase wheels.
After six decades of this daily traffic, the sidewalk cracks became concentrated repositories of wealth. Stepanian believed the density of precious materials in those grimy seams exceeded that of actual diamond and gold mines. He wasn't exaggerating—his weekly hauls proved it.
The Urban Mining Operation
Stepanian's technique was methodical. Armed with a bucket, industrial magnets, precision tweezers, and custom scraping tools, he'd start his shifts after 7:30 PM when the district's businesses closed. Under streetlights, he'd work the expansion joints, extracting the black gunk packed between cement slabs.
The real work happened later: sorting through the muck for flecks of gold, silver, and the occasional gemstone. His trained jeweler's eye could spot a 1-millimeter diamond chip in a pile of street debris. Those skills, honed over decades in the trade, turned trash into treasure.
What he typically found:
- Gold fragments and chain links
- Silver particles
- Diamond chips and small stones
- Rubies, sapphires, and other gems
- Platinum traces
When Fortune Doesn't Stick
Here's the tragic irony: despite pulling hundreds of dollars weekly from sidewalk cracks, Raffi Stepanian eventually became homeless. The same streets that paid him became the ones he slept on. Later reports found him struggling with hard times and personal setbacks, a reminder that consistent income and financial stability aren't the same thing.
His story captured media attention from TIME, NBC New York, and NPR's Marketplace. He became known as New York's "Urban Prospector," a modern-day forty-niner working a very different kind of claim. But the attention didn't translate to lasting security.
Stepanian's saga reveals something uncomfortable about New York: you can find gold in the streets and still end up with nothing. The Diamond District continues its daily hemorrhage of precious materials, now walked over by thousands who've heard his story but never thought to look down.