A Tsunami of Coins

A very warm day was expected. Like every day at 12 during my break time, I would take out my X-TERRA 705 for a walk in the fields with the kind permission of the local producers.

However, when I arrived at the car, it was so warm that I told myself that I better have my meal at the edge of the water where its shady and leave my detector in the trunk. But of course I couldn’t resist to do some detecting.

Ok, I had only one hour and 15 minutes to do some detecting, including finishing up my lunch. From one shady area to another, it suddenly occurred to me to go to the direction of the forest. I normally wouldn’t even go there because I knew I would not find anything. Nevertheless, I was thinking that at least I could do some detecting where it is shady.

I arrived in the forest at the exit of the village. It was a forest mixed of oak, hornbeam, ash and some ivies on the ground. A nice small path appeared in front of me. Let’s start detecting! I first found a cartridge after what I was bitten by a mosquito, then by a second one and a third, it was not easy. I was sweating profusely and the sun was shining hard on top of my head (in the evening, i had a look at the thermometer at home, 32°C under the shadow was the maximum for this day). But luckily the mosquitoes didn’t leave painful bites on me.

Suddenly, I heard a nice clear signal and I dig a shallow hole with my spade to make sure that I wouldn’t scratch the gold coin that I was already imagining ;-) But no! It was a 5 franc Bazor coin, and then another and another two and there came a first «yellow» 50 cents Morlon, then 50 cents again. I started to anticipate my first coin purse hoard. I was sweating more and more, my heart was beating faster as the heat from the sun increased. I continued to dig until I couldn’t find anything  anymore. A total of 22 coins came out from the same spot.

My findings could have stopped here, but...

At the end of my little path, I thought I should make a U-turn, i had only half and hour left. I decided to return in the forest by walking along at about 20 meters of the path. I found several cartridges, some wine caps, a military button, two cans of paté.......

I arrived in a area where my detector started to get crazy. I couldn’t localise, it was beeping everywhere, what was that?

I started to dig but it was only tens of wine steel caps hidden under the soil, too bad!

I continued and arrived at the place where I discovered my first find. I told myself, let’s cross the forest to reach the path where the car was parked. Of course with the intention to check again one last time the spot where I found my first coins. Who knows I might have missed a few stuff since I was in a hurry.

And again, at 10 meter from the spot, the detector made the same sounds like before with the wine caps but the value displayed the screen was not the same. Damn, not the wine caps again? I didn’t have any more courage, it was totally warm, very warm, I was sweating and it was time to get back to my car, but just to be sure I scoop out a shovel of soil, I couldn’t believe my eyes. But my sense of professionalism made me look at the time. I could not stay, I had to go back to work. I took the dozen of coins (Bon du Commerce and 0.5, 1 and 2 Francs Morlon gold plated bronze ) and I marked the spot my own way. I will come back again tomorrow.

The next day, I found myself again at the same spot. I had carefully eaten my lunch in hiding at work to save some extra 20 minutes.

All set, it gave the signal, I dug in and I was astonished. I held my first « treasure ».

Dozens of coins slipped under the shovel to the point that I didn’t dig so much and I sat on the ground so that I could just pass the soil in my hand across the coil.

The coins were in good conditions but they were hard to distinguish, especially the 50 cents Morlon and Bon du Commerce because they were small and covered by white thick clay. The hole was getting bigger, wider and deeper. It was time. I had to hide all of that because along the street and everyday, at the same time, an old guy on a bicycle passed by and saw me digging the place.

I was putting myself in his shoes  “ maybe this guy is burying a dead body...“

The thought kept bothering me the whole night.

So I decided that on Saturday morning, I will go very early to the same spot to finish up harvesting my find. I finished at around 11.30am from 7am in the morning, with a total of 420 coins found this day, to add with another 402 coins from the earlier find.

My hole was 2.5m x 2m and 50cm deep. What I actually found was the stump of an old tree with the coins spread all around it by its roots.

In total, I found 822 coins in this hole. I asked some treasure specialists. According to the type of coins and their year of mint, we could imagine that this treasure is the result of a theft but the guy never came back to take it and me, on this sunny and nice day, I found it like the Zorro of metal detecting.