The man got tens of millions of rubles for a coin picked up in the field
Photo: Spink & Son
A treasure hunter found a rare antique gold coin in a field near the village of Hemiok in the English county of Devon and sold it at auction for 648 thousand pounds (68.6 million rubles). This is reported by the Daily Mail.
Michael Lee-Mallory went into the field with a metal detector for the first time in ten years. During the search, the man picked up a golden penny, which depicts King Henry III in a crown and with a beard. The diameter of the coin is 21 millimeters.
The treasure hunter did not know that the coin was rare until he posted a photo of the find on Facebook. She was noticed by a specialist of the auction company Spink from London. It turned out that only eight such coins were known to exist. Other specimens are in the British Museum in London, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and private collections. This coin is considered to be the first found in 260 years, so it was possible to get tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling for it.
Numismatists claim that the coin depicts the first real portrait of an English king since the time of William I the Conqueror. The reverse of the coin is decorated with a cross, dots and images of roses.
At the auction, the price of the coin reached 540 thousand pounds (57.1 million rubles), and with additional fees, the final amount paid by a private buyer from the UK was 648 thousand pounds (68.6 million rubles). This is a world record for a Henry III era coin, and almost the most valuable medieval English coin sold at auction. The buyer is going to hand over the coin for display in a museum or other institution.
Lee-Mallory will split the proceeds in half with the owner of the land where the coin was found. The man intends to spend money to provide children with a comfortable future. An Englishman visited the grave of Henry III in London to thank him. “That day my wish came true, and I was the lucky one who found her. I need to apologize to other treasure hunters who are looking and dreaming,” he said.
Henry III ruled England from 1216 until his death in 1272. In the 1240s and 1250s, he demanded that all payments be made in gold to provide savings for large foreign projects. But it became obvious that they were financially unviable, since the value of the coin was lower than its weight in gold. After Henry’s death in 1257, his coins were melted down and replaced with pennies of the correct weight.
Earlier it was reported that in British Wales, an amateur treasure hunter found a unique medieval brooch with an emerald. According to experts, its cost can reach 100 thousand pounds (about 10.5 million rubles).
