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Henry 3 Gold Penny Found


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3 hours ago, brys said:

finding something like this in UK soil is like winning the powerball lottery the odds are not good

even when you have the ground to search its very had to make good finds

theres a smalll army of detectorists searching but most make no finds of any value

week  in week out

When something like this is found in the UK isn’t the finder only entitled to half the value of the item found?   Or is that for multiple coins found (a hoard)?

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They would have a hard time pulling that out of my hand for $500,000. I'm not known as a sharing kinda guy. The UK does have some tough treasure rules though. (still would be a fist fight) Man that's a fantastic looking coin!!!!!!

Thanks for posting that Steve

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10 hours ago, NCtoad said:

When something like this is found in the UK isn’t the finder only entitled to half the value of the item found?   Or is that for multiple coins found (a hoard)?

From my understanding, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if several coins or historic items were found together it's considered a "hoard" then the rest of the coins/treasure if any at the site would excavated, researched, etc. and then be appraised and then museums would bid on them and the finder would get the money, if found on private land and the finder had permission the then the finder and land owner split the money, if no permission was granted then the landowner gets all the money, if found on public land the finder gets all the money.

When only one coin or historic item is found it isn't considered a hoard and the finder can sell it themselves and to whomever they please for however much they can get for it.

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On 1/17/2022 at 3:30 PM, PimentoUK said:

It's funny nomenclature, but that's what it is. It may be how they were known in Medieval times, ie. a silver penny and a gold penny ( worth 20 silver pennies ) . They did keep detailed written records back then of coin production, how many they made, how many were withdrawn, who funded the production, who was the mint manager responsible etc etc., so I'm sure there's some reference to "the stryking of ten thousand golde pennys" in some old ledger in the Royal Mint's archives.

The term 'penny' goes back a long long way, it's from the Germanic 'pfennig', from 500 AD or earlier, and we Brits adopted it along with their coins in the 600's. It's meaning was essentially 'coin' or 'money' , the concept of 'twopenny coin' or 'sixpence coin' didn't exist. Later coins, in the 800's, were cut in half or in 4 to make halfpennies and fourthings ( modern 'farthing' ), but it's rather blatant that half a coin is half a penny, no-one is going to be confused or tricked.

Any Medieval gold coin would be any detectorists home run, but this guy won the lottery!!

It's interesting that penny and cent are not the same thing.  Even though they are commonly incorrectly called pennies in the United States, we have never used pennies here since instituting our currency standard, as our currency system is based on the Spanish dollar aka pieces of eight. 

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Aw, that’s just a penny- I’d be targeting the quarters and half pounds!

Amazing find, and really interesting designs.  And being gold, it really was able to hold up well for all those years!

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On 1/18/2022 at 6:01 AM, brys said:

Three days to go and already 230k GBP has been bid.  There's a humble account by the finder in the auction's description entry (included in the above link), although not with details we'd like to see (e.g. no mention of what detector he was using).

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Curious- other than procurement from other melted down gold items, what region of England may the native gold (if the coin has any) have come from in the 1200’s?

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