Stumbled on a roman coin hoard near my town last week

I was reading the local history society's newsletter and found out that back in 2015, some guy with a metal detector found 1,200 roman coins buried in a field just 3 miles from my house. They dated them to around 270 AD, right during a big economic crisis. Has anyone else here found out something wild happened right under their nose?

4 comments

4 Comments

samrodriguez8d ago

And a buddy of mine actually met the guy who found that hoard near here. Dug it up over three weekends, kept quiet about it until the museum archaeologists could get out there and excavate the site properly. The coins ended up in a local museum exhibit, and my friend said the detectorist still goes out to that same field on weekends just to see if anything else turns up.

tessaperry8d ago

Wow I gotta admit I used to think metal detecting was just for random bottle caps and old nails. But 1200 coins from a real economic crisis buried so close to town actually sounds super interesting. Makes me want to look up what else might be hiding under my own feet.

ruby6598d ago

Oh man, that's genuinely wild to think about! I bet if I walked around my backyard with a metal detector all I'd find is rusty old nails and maybe a beer cap from the 90s lmao. 1200 coins though, that's like a whole ancient person's life savings just sitting there waiting to be found. Makes me wonder how many crazy historical things are buried right under our feet that we just never notice because we're too busy looking at our phones lol.

singh.harper8d ago

Ruby659 says it was a "whole ancient person's life savings" but that's just guessing. Those coins could have been from a tax collector hoarding stolen money, or a merchant stashing profits from a bad business deal. You don't know if it was some poor guy's retirement fund or a corrupt official's hidden stash. Calling it a life savings just makes a nice story out of an unknown situation.