Treasure found with a metal detector. A few hours out in the mud can earn you a fortune.

GEEK ALERT!!

Yep, it's true.... Not only do I stack silver and other precious metals, but in my spare time I actually enjoy going out and swinging my metal detector.

I use my trusted Garrett ace 250. She's a basic, entry level detector, but at the higher spec end of the entry models. It cost me £180 to buy new some 6yrs ago and has already recouped her money back several times over. My biggest find was a 17thC, pure gold, "posy" ring, which now rests in the national museum of Wales

Unfortunately, it's been a very long time since I actually last made it out, but I do still like to keep up with all the most recent treasures finds made by metal detectorists. So just because I've finished ready this one today, I'll share the highlights with you guys.

One of the newest finds to be declared treasure was found on land near Blythburgh in February last year. The hoard of 19 gold coins from the Iron Age was unearthed in Suffolk and was a very unusual find for the area. The coins, many of which dated to 45-25BC, were likely to have been deposited after AD20, and had been circulated and spent for a period of possibly 40 to 50yrs.

(My location - blue, Find location - red)

Experts say many of the gold staters and quarter staters were attributed to the "pre-Roman" tribal leader Addedomaros, King of Trinovantes. These coins, associated with the Celtic ruler, were more commonly found in Hertfordshire, Essex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire. So to find this amount of coins this far east in Suffolk is a great find.

Archaeologists have said that this is evidence showing "cross cultural interaction" between nearby counties at a time when they thought not to be interacting.

Not only are these coins a surprising find for this location of the country, but one of the coins found had previously been unrecorded. The treasure inquest was told that this specific design of coin had "not seen before", and was of upmost importance in understanding how people during this time. Some featured a "flower type" design that "we don't see very often" and another featured two "unusual" reversed S-shapes.

The lucky metal detectorist found the hoard within a 10-15m square, which would indicate either the lot was buried together OR dropped in a hurry. The great thing about these stories is that we will never know the truth and that's what keeps me interested.

It is not yet known which museum will take the coins, but there had been "a lot of interest", so I would expect the price of this find to be somewhere in the low thousands (£).

Posted via Steemleo