I’m not sure what people are looking for when they use a metal detector, but I’m sure the fantasy is to uncover buried treasure. Terry Herbert of Burntwood, Staffordshire has scored the ultimate metal detector prize: 1,500 pieces of beautiful Anglo-Saxon gold.
Experts said the collection of more than 1,500 pieces – which will be officially classified by a coroner as treasure – is unparalleled in size and may have belonged to Saxon royalty. The hoard, believed to date back to the seventh century, contains around 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, far bigger than previous finds – including the Sutton Hoo burial site.
It may take more than a year to value the collection and, given its scale, the financial worth of the hoard cannot be estimated.
Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. (It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”
Comments (6)
[...] with a metal detector stumbled upon a monumental treasure trove of ancient Anglo-Saxon bling-bling, which you can find here. Today comes new photographs of some of the items. Can you imagine pulling this loot out of the [...]
[...] with a metal detector stumbled upon a monumental treasure trove of ancient Anglo-Saxon bling-bling, which you can find here. Today comes new photographs of some of the items. Can you imagine pulling this loot out of the [...]
[...] Herbert, 55, an unemployed guy, was in a farmer’s field in Staffordshire, England, with his metal detector when he found a bunch of items likely dating back to the 7th century and worth over $1 million. But [...]
[...] are making a huge comeback lately, or so it seems. It was just a few months ago that a guy with metal detector uncovered 1,500 pieces of ancient Saxon gold. This week? A 2,000-year-old treasure hoard dating back to the Iron Age, with a value estimated at [...]
Thats an excellent find. I wonder what the purity of those Gold coins are, nearly pure or did they make alloys of 22 carat etc. then? Probably just as pure as the Gold to make the coin comes out of the ground???
The value of gold currently can be found at: Gold Fix Charts http://www.gold-fix.co.uk That gives an idea of the actual value of the Coin hoard.