Two guys using metal detectors discover hoard of 50,000 Iron Age Celtic coins

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Two guys using metal detectors discover hoard of 50,000 Iron Age Celtic coins

Everyone who’s ever held a metal detector has some sort of dream in the back of their head about finding really old, really valuable coins, but it happens pretty rarely. Two lucky chaps in Jersey, UK found a huge hoard of 50,000 Iron Age coins in the same field they’ve been sweeping over for 30 years. The collection is estimated to be worth over $15 million.

Reg Mead and Richard Miles found the clump inside a massive block of soil in a field in Jersey, U.K., and it’s thought that the coins were from Armorica, modern Brittany, and Normandy. The coins, which are in surprisingly good condition, are thought to have been buried at a time when Caesar was campaigning through Gaul. The owner likely buried the coins in an effort to hide them — never to be seen again, until now.

Writing in The Guardian, Maev Kennedy had this to add:

Most of the Jersey coins are still locked inside the soil block, which weighs three quarters of a ton and has been removed in one piece from the ground and taken to a safe place.

Excavation continues in the field to make sure the whole story has been revealed. The exact location has not been disclosed, and the island’s environment minister, Rob Duhamel, said it would get official protection to keep it safe from looters. “It is a very exciting piece of news and perhaps harks back to our cultural heritage in terms of finance. It was found under a hedge so perhaps this is an early example of hedge fund trading.”

De Jersey said the find was exceptional, “certainly the largest hoard of Iron Age coins ever found, not just in Jersey but the whole of the Celtic coin-using world … it is difficult to come out with a figure much below 50,000 coins given the volume of the block.”

He believes there may also be Iron Age jewellery in the soil block, as in other Jersey hoards.

Via