It all started on a cold Friday morning with coil to the soils first official weekend rally
We did the usual getting the area ready water and food supply’s ready, the first 25 members were starting to trickle onto the field from about 8am thru out the day myself ian Dannie pip and craig where on hand to help anyone that was in need, everybody signed in then a quick chat of the basics and layout of the land before eager diggers descended onto the fields I stayed on camp chatting to members and socialising with those not so eager lol.
It was about 2.30 in the afternoon so decided to go out for half hour while it was quiet soon as I got on field my Minelab Quattro sounded of to a nice silver florin followed by a nice shilling and then a six pence all in the space of 5 minutes always liked the silver Quattro’s pinged on a nice 15 16 on the screen vdu
That was enough for me then I returned to the tents with my finds to show other members I remember thinking good start might find something good this weekend with finding the 3 silver coins already
It was pretty quiet over the weekend still cold and the odd shower we noticed weather was turning Sunday so decided to let the guys that was left by Sunday to go on Mondays field early this is where it all changed for me
I wasn’t ready to go and craig shouted me get your detector where nipping to new field so I ran to tent grabbed the Quattro and jumped in car only to get to field and realise my battery had about two minutes of power luckily someone had some spare battery’s in they popped and of I went up and down field remember digging one target nothing much and then about ten 15 minutes in to field I hit a signal scratchy 17 a sure sign of something other than alloy cans bottle tops or rusty nails when I dug the whole I saw the edge of the coin and thought its hammered but doesn’t look like one of ours shouting over to craig could it be Celtic I remember dropping the clump of soil in his hands and letting him break the clod open and he just stood there looking at me then another member came over and said he had seen the coin in a magazine he remembers seeing the tree on the coin on the front of the magazine another guy Shane came down and put it online for id and within minutes his news feed online had received many comments with the first one saying wow your mates just won the lottery im not a coin collector im more of an artefact’s guy so it never really affected me but it’s safe to say there was a lot of celebrating to be done on my coins behalf.
The coin is a rare 1652 colonial oak tree three pence with a very strong strike its currently in the usa being slabbed its grade mark is au50 a very good grade above VF condition glowing reports of its condition and type are still being raved about 2 weeks on. for me it is a truly awesome find probably the find of my life one thing I do now is that im out even more now looing searching trying to find those rare items
Minted! Dug up in a Midlands field, a £1m 'perfect' US threepenny bit from the time of the Pilgrim Fathers Click here to watch the Sky News interview with John.
John – England, UK
