A man won a metal detector in a lottery and then found a rare historical treasure

A novice treasure hunter who won a metal detector in a lottery found historic silver coins worth £23,000.

This was reported by SSPDaily.

The 63-year-old Mickey Richardson found 234 coins in a muddy field in the British village of Anst.

It was one of Mickey's first finds, and the money was probably buried there for safekeeping by a farmer in 1644 during the English Civil War. But it seems that the owner was killed before he could retrieve the coins, and they have remained hidden until now.

Mickey found them scattered across a field, suspecting that over the centuries, farmers plowing the fields had moved them. He was very happy when he found the first coin with the bust of King Charles I, and then spent two days looking for the rest.

Mickey said: "I just couldn't believe it. On the first day I dug up 74 silver coins, and after that I was shattered. I came back the next morning thinking it would be good to round up to 100, but I found 234 coins scattered around the radius."

The coins span the reigns of King Edward VI in the 1550s, Queen Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. Some of the Elizabethan and James coins were scratched, probably by a former Catholic owner in protest of their Protestant views and the reformation of the Catholic Church.

Mickey handed the coins over to the local finds liaison officer, a special official of the city council who documents metal detector finds as required by the Treasure Act.

The British Museum examined them before returning them to Mickey as the "keeper of the finds." He watched live and "jumped up and down" when the coins were sold at Spink & Son's London auction for £23,000, including fees.

Mickey, from Bournemouth, Dorset, is to split the proceeds 50/50 with the landowner. The man is already planning a summer vacation for himself and his wife Rosalind.

He says he started walking with the metal detector only a few months before his find.

"I had a very basic metal detector that I would just take to the beach in Bournemouth," he explained. "But then I entered a raffle on a metal detecting club's Facebook group and won the first prize, a top-of-the-line metal detector. A few months after that, I got permission from the owner of the land in Anst, where there used to be a small village and where the fields were used to grow hops for brewing beer during the Napoleonic Wars. I went there a few times and found a copper coin, but that was it. Then I found a treasure and was about to call it a day when I got a strong signal and found a Charles I shilling. I searched the area again. Then I combed the area again and got another signal, and then another and another. It was a day I will never forget."

Mickey said he expected the coins to sell at auction for £10,000, so he was thrilled with the end result. But he added: "It wasn't about the money, it was about the history and preservation of the coins. The money is a bonus."