While looking for a lost tractor key in a field in the Netherlands, metal detectorists Gert-Jan Messelaar and Reinier Koelink stumbled upon something much more valuable: a hoard of 404 ancient coins, some dating as far back as 200 B.C.
Messelaar and Koelink initially found a single golden Celtic coin near the surface of the mud, but their metal detectors kept beeping, leading them to find a total of 381 coins.
After reporting their finds to the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the agency excavated 23 more.
Messelaar said after their initial discovery,
We opened a bottle of champagne. You never find this.
Smithsonian Magazine reported that the coins,
Dated to between 200 B.C.E. [B.C.] and 47 C.E.[A.D.], 360 of the coins are Roman in origin. Of these, 288 are denarii, the standard silver coin, and 72 are aurei, a denser, golden coin that was originally worth 25 denarii.
The remaining coins were of British and North African origin.
Archeologists believe the stash of coins must have been military pay combined with spoils of war. Some of them appeared to be freshly minted and unused before they were hidden away.
A press release regarding the discovery said,
It is likely that the coins were brought back to Bunnik by returning Roman soldiers from Britannia after the first conquests: the Roman coins as pay and the British ones as war booty.
The combination of Roman and British coins is the only discovery of its kind in mainland Europe, making this hoard of coins truly one of a kind, and every metal detectorist's dream find.
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