Like all good stories it starts out with chatting to good friends about detecting and leads to a planned detecting adventure. The day arrived and I left home to meet up with a good friend Michael for a day’s detecting chatting laughing and finally putting the world to rights and in ten minutes sorting the whole Brexit deal done and dusted. After setting up my ancient Minelab Explorer II, with the stock 10 inch coil on and heading out on a field of half harvested very wet sugar beet away we went. We started finding the usual buttons and Victorian coppers and lead and decided to move over the road to a drier stubble field. As soon as I walked on the field I had a medieval figure 8 shaped buckle, then after about ten minutes I had a lovely Victoria silver sixpence as clean as the day it was lost. It always amazes me the way silver can be in the ground for hundreds of years yet come out as pristine as the day it was lost. I carried on. For another 10 minutes with nothing but lead and a medieval buckle plate added to my finds bag. I then decided to re-balance my machine to see if i could Winkle a small hammered out of its hiding place. After walking about 10-15 paces or swings of the coil I had a screaming sound coming through my rather cheap pair of old Tandy headphones (they do have a great sound on the Minelab). I thought not another piece of lead so half-heartedly I dug a clod out and ran the detector over it and you've guessed it, it was out. Before i bent down I could see the glint of silver but thicker than a hammered, ah a Denarii I thought, so bending down and snatching it from its muddy resting place and wiping the soil away I could see a Roman face but couldn't recall seeing it before and when I turned it over and cleaned it I could see something rather confusing. A cross molèt in a wreath. Very unusual for a Roman. I continued searching the area for a while but nothing so I made my way over to Michael to show him what i had. Found. He said he thought it had a Saxon. Look about it as did I. I will let you that are reading this make up your own minds up until I have a definitive identification.
Vince – Norfolk, UK
