A stroke of luck led an amateur metal detector to discover what would be one of the first gold coins in England, for which he could receive up to half a million dollars.
The “Henry III gold penny” was minted around 1257 and depicts the former English king seated on an ornate throne, holding an orb and sceptre.
It is known that there are about eight coins of this type, most of them are exhibited in museums.
The valuable find was made on farmland in Devon, in the south-west of the country, by a seeker who wishes to remain anonymous.
The discoverer of the penny did not measure the value of the coin he had found until he posted a photograph of it on Facebook, that’s where Gregory Edmund, a numismatist at the auction house Spink & Son, saw it .
“This was one of his first prospecting days in many, many years. years, so obviously he couldn’t believe what he discovered,” Edmund told CNN, referring to the detector.
“It was a fortuitous discovery during perfectly legal prospecting within the competitions, and it is just that this particular prospector did not realize how important the find was until he sought an expert opinion.”
According to a pre-sale estimate by British auctioneer Spink & Son in London, where it will be auctioned on Sunday, the rare coin could see a windfall of up to £000,000 ($546,000).
According to the UK Treasury Act of 1996, the coin can be kept and sold by the hobbyist who found it, as it is not considered part of a larger discovery.
King Henry III ruled England from 1216 until his death in 1272, one of the longest reigns in the history of the country. In 1257, he used the treasure he had personally amassed to mint his gold coin, according to David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London.
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