An amateur treasure hunter using a metal detector found one of the very first gold coins in England on farmland in Devon in the UK and now he can get a reward of more than half a million dollars for it. It is reported by the portal CNN.
Henry III’s gold penny, discovered on a farm in Chemyok by an enthusiastic archaeologist who wished to remain anonymous, was minted around 1257 and bears on its obverse an image of the English monarch seated on a richly decorated throne, holding orb and scepter. It is one of eight known coins of its kind, many of which are in museums. One of them was sold at auction last year for $720,000. The finder of the coin did not realize how valuable it could be until he posted a photo of the penny on his Facebook page. It was there that Gregory Edmund, a numismatist at Spink & Son, spotted her. “It was one of the first days of this man’s treasure hunt in many, many years, so he obviously could not fully believe what he had discovered,” Edmund explained in an interview with CNN, referring to the amateur treasure hunter. . “It was an accidental discovery in a perfectly legitimate search, it’s just that this particular seeker didn’t fully realize how important his find was until he asked for the opinion of the experts.”
Under the UK Acts 1996, an amateur who finds a coin may keep it or sell it, as it is not considered part of a larger hoard. “The fact that this coin has been perfectly preserved over the past three quarters of a millennium seems like a miracle,” says the finder of this penny. “Every amateur always dreams of something like this, and that day I was just very lucky.”
King Henry III ruled England from 1216 until his death in 1272, one of the longest reigns in the country’s history. In 1257, the king used his accumulated treasures to mint gold coins, and this was the first such coinage since the Norman Conquest – until then, more silver coins were in circulation in the economy. Edmund argues that the new gold coinage could be based on Byzantine coins or Islamic gold dinars, since in those years new trade routes were being laid between Europe and the Middle East.
Photo: Auction company Spink & Son
