A NOVICE treasure hunter who won a metal detector in a raffle unearthed a hoard of rare coins just three months later.
The 234 silver coins were eventually sold at auction for £18,500 but the finder Mickey Richardson only got to keep half of the proceeds.
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Mr Richardson, who had just taken up the hobby, unearthed one coin with the bust of King Charles I on before spending an exhaustive weekend uncovering the rest in a muddy field once used by a brewer to grow hops.
It’s thought the coins were buried for safekeeping by a farmer in 1644 as the English Civil War raged around him.
Over the next four centuries the coins had been repeatedly struck by a farmer’s plow and scattered over a wide area in the field on Ansty, near Dorchester, Dorset.
The coins covered the reigns of King Edward VI in the 1550s, Queen Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I.
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Some of the Elizabeth and James’ coins had been defaced by being scratched, probably by a former Catholic owner in protest at their protestant views and the reformation of the Catholic Church.
The 63-year-old handed the coins over to his local Finds Liaison Officer as required by law under the Treasure Act (1996).
The British Museum spent some time examining them before they were disclaimed and returned to Mr Richardson as ‘finders keepers’.
He watched live as the coins were sold at London auctioneers Spink & Son for £18,500.
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With fees added on the total price paid for them as £23,000.
Mr Richardson, a grandfather from Bournemouth, Dorset, must split the proceeds 50/50 with the landowner but he is planning a summer holiday for him and wife Rosalynd with his share.
I discovered a coin while cleaning out my grandma’s home – I thought it was worth a couple bucks but it’s valued at $8.5k
He said: “I only took up the hobby a few months before and I had a very basic metal detector which I just used to take down to Bournemouth beach.
“But then I entered a raffle on a Facebook group for a metal detecting club and won the first prize which was a top of the range detector.
“A couple of months after that I got permission from the owner of land in Ansty where there used to be a small mudhouse village and where the fields were used to grow hops to brew beer in the Napoleonic Wars.
“I had been there a couple of times and found a copper coin but that was it.
“On the weekend I found the hoard I was just about to call it a day when I got a strong signal and found a Charles I shilling.
“Then I swept the area again and got another signal and then another signal and another.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I dug up 74 silver coins on the first day and was shattered afterwards.
“I went back the next morning thinking it would be nice to round it up to 100 but found a total of 234 coins spread over a radius.
“They must have been struck by a plow and scattered across the field and I was the lucky one who found them almost 500 years later.
“It was a day I will never forget. I alerted the Finds Liaison Officer and the rest is history.”
What the Treasure Act 1996 says
It applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland
The Act was drawn up to define which objects are classified as treasure and legally obliging the finder to report their find.
A report of a find must be reported within 14 days to the local coroner.
If it is declared to be treasure then the finder must offer the item for sale to a museum at a price set by an independent board of antiquities experts known as the Treasure Valuation Committee.
Only if a museum expresses no interest in the item, or is unable to purchase it, can the finder keep it.
The Act allows for a reward up to the market value of the treasure to be shared among the finder and the tenants and/or owner of the land on which the treasure was found.
Under the Act, treasure is defined as:
- All coins from the same find, if it consists of two or more coins, and as long as they are at least 300 years old when found. If they contain less than 10 per cent gold or silver there must be at least 10 in the find for it to qualify.
- Two or more prehistoric base metal objects in association with one another.
- Any individual (non-coin) find that is at least 300 years old and contains at least 10 per cent gold or silver.
- Associated finds: any object of any material found in the same place as (or which had previously been together with) another object which is deemed treasure.
- An object that would have been classed as treasure trove if found before section 4 came into force, that is: one substantially made from gold or silver but less than 300 years old, that has been deliberately hidden with the intention of recovery and whose owners or heirs are unknown.
Mr Richardson said he was expecting the hoard to sell for £10,000 at auction so was delighted with the final result.
He watched the auction live online and was “jumping up and down” as it played out.
He added: “It wasn’t about the money but about the history and preserving the coins. The money is a bonus.
“I will probably now take a nice holiday in the summer with my wife.”
Gregory Edmund, from Spink, said: “The vendor live-streamed the sale and he was jumping up and down at some of the prices achieved. He was very happy.”
Spink coin specialist Ella Mackenzie added: “This ensemble encompasses the most unstable time in our nation’s history.
“These coins circulated in the pockets of a crucially formative period for England in so many ways: from constitutional, to religious, socio-economic and obviously political.”
Being able to handle this hoard has been a rare privilege.”
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Britain has a rich history of Civil War hoards, with almost 400 cases documented around the country.
However, the auctioneers said it is still rare for them to come up for public sale.
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