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Clearing out your home can uncover all sorts of trinkets long forgotten, but for one resident of the Yorkshire Dales it led to the discovery of six genuine treasures he never knew he had. And now the rare Australian banknotes hiding under the lining paper of his chest of drawers have fetched a staggering £410,490 at auction. The elderly owner in his 80s, who wants to remain anonymous, was due to move into a retirement home and called in his local auctioneers to go through the house and see what they could sell for him. Rodney Tennant, of Tennant's Auctioneers,...

LONDON — For the jobless man living on welfare who made the find in an English farmer’s field two months ago, it was the stuff of dreams: a hoard of early Anglo-Saxon treasure, probably dating from the seventh century and including more than 1,500 pieces of intricately worked gold and silver whose craftsmanship and historical significance left archaeologists awestruck. When the discovery in Staffordshire was announced Thursday, experts described it as one of the most important in British archaeological history. They said it surpassed the greatest previous discovery of its kind, a royal burial chamber unearthed in 1939 at Sutton...

Deputy head of Portable Antiquities Scheme, British Museum This treasure paints a new picture of our past and the Dark Ages. What makes it outstanding is the sheer quantity - we're talking about 1,500 objects, almost entirely precious metal. Normally you would expect a handful of objects each year of this quality for the period in question, which is the 7th Century. A metal detectorist finding just one of these objects would consider it the find of their life. To find 1,500 is bizarre and it would blow the average person's mind. Now, everybody wants to know who it belongs...

13 gold coins have been found, wrapped together, by the river in Córdoba If you know where to look, buried treasure can still be found in Spain. The latest find was not however thanks to a map marked with an ‘X’, but came as part of an archaeological excavation as part of new drainage works in Córdoba, close to the famous Roman Bridge in the city centre. 13 gold coins, escudos, from the reign of Carlos III, dated from 1776 to 1801, and wrapped in a cloth, were found under a layer of limestone which has kept them in a...

Roy Langbord had guessed that someone in his family might have hidden away a great treasure decades before, but not until his mother had him check a long-neglected safe-deposit box did he realize just how great it was. Inside the box, opened in 2003, he found an incredibly rare coin, wrapped in a delicate paper sleeve. It was a gold $20 piece with Lady Liberty on one side, a bald eagle flying across the other and, at Liberty’s left, the four digits that made it so valuable: 1933. The famous “double eagles” from that year were never officially released by...

A very large and important find of a hoard of Roman coins was recently discovered by a novice metal detector user in the Shrewsbury area. This is probably one of the largest coin hoards ever discovered in Shropshire. The finder, Mr Nic. Davies, bought his first metal detector a month ago and this is his first find made with it. The hoard was discovered close to a public bridleway on land that Mr Davies did not have permission to detect on. All land is owned by someone and it is important that permission to search is obtained in advance. The...

The largest-ever known number of coins from the time of Bar-Kochba, the Jewish leader against Roman invaders, has been discovered in the Judean Hills by cave researchers from Hebrew and Bar-Ilan Universities.

Last month we told you about people who stumbled upon their fortune. If you haven’t found your own copy of the Declaration of Independence or a few thousand Ancient Roman coins, let me give you a push in the right direction with these tales of lost treasures that are just waiting for you to find them. 1. The Lying Dutchman? Arthur Flegenheimer, who went by the alias “Dutch Schultz,” was a New York mobster during the 1920s and ’30s known for his brutality and hard-nosed business tactics. By the time he was 33, Dutch had taken on the Mafia in...

While the Western & Official Islamic Iranian Media ignores the story, a Turkish lawyer has claimed that his Iranian client, Esmail Safarian-Nasab, has transferred an $18.5-billion treasure from Iran to Turkey through "courier services" - reportedly two truckloads as opposed to the original story of just one. The TWO container-TRUCK loads of "courier services" of US dollars and gold bullion was delivered to Ankara Customs last month. (Watch video below for visuals only unless you speak Turkish) but efforts have been made by Turkey (even denying any money arrived) and some Mullah friendly Press, to confuse/misdirect it with a smallish,...

MORE than a thousand years ago a Saxon thief, desperate to hide his plunder, stashed a hoard of stolen gold in what is today a nondescript West Yorkshire field. What became of the thief is lost to the ages and his precious loot lay safely buried in that same field for the next millennium. There it remained until a treasure hunter, out with his trusty metal detector last year, experienced the moment he will never forget when he unearthed the amazing find on the farmland near Leeds. Archaeological experts say they believe the three gold rings, half a gold ingot...

A TREASURE hunter has unearthed a 14th-century silver ring at the back of a farmer's field in Flintshire. Douglas Fletcher, 44, of Flint, found the decorative, gilt, 97 per cent silver ring in the field in his home town, in January last year. At an inquest in Flint yesterday, the find was declared treasure by John Gittins, deputy coroner for north east Wales. Mr Fletcher, who has been treasure hunting for three years with wife Linda, came across the ring on one of his regular solo hunts. The Mold Historical Search Society member had to dig just six inches into...

The remains of a 1,500-year-old Saxon burial ground have been uncovered by two Sussex metal detector enthusiasts. Bob White and Cliff Smith unearthed brooches, a bronze bowl, a spear and a shield from the graves of a man and two women on farmland near Lewes. Mr Smith, of Eastbourne District Metal Detecting Club, said he knew he had found something special when he noticed part of a bowl and a piece of skull. It is thought the family were relatively wealthy and of high status. Mr Smith and Mr White called Sussex Police as soon as they uncovered the items...

Californian is fighting heirs in Texas over the right to dig for it If Nathan Smith's plan to search for a buried treasure near the Texas Gulf Coast using Google Earth and a metal detector sounds like a Hollywood movie, it should. After all, Smith, a California musician, was inspired by the hit National Treasure movies starring Nicolas Cage. And like any good swashbuckling flick, there's a dramatic tale — this one involving cannibalized 19th-century sailors who supposedly left the pot of gold and silver behind in Refugio County in South Texas. Trying to bankroll his art by becoming a...

THREE treasure hunting friends have struck gold again after unearthing Bronze Age treasure in the same spot near Wrexham for the second time in three years. William May, Joseph Perry and Peter Skelly, all from Liverpool, found a pure gold bead and wire piece in a farmer's field outside Rossett, near Wrexham, in August of last year. At an inquest in Flint yesterday, the find was declared treasure by John Gittins, deputy coroner for north east Wales. The latest find belongs to the so-called "Burton Hoard", which was discovered by the three friends in 2004 on the same field in...

For 40 years, Maurice Richardson has been braving all weathers to scour the countryside with his trusty metal detector, dreaming of buried treasure. But he almost ignored an unpromising-sounding beep as he searched for debris from a wartime air crash while being pelted with rain. However the 59-year-old is glad his curiosity got the better of him after his persistence in digging through more than two feet of Nottinghamshire mud yielded a stunning 2,000-year-old gold treasure. Metal detector enthusiast Maurice Richardson discovered this 2,000-year-old gold torc while digging through two feet of Nottinghamshire mud Now the artefact, an Iron Age...

A SAXON hook tag found in a Herefordshire field field has been declared as treasure. Assistant county coroner Roland Wooderson confirmed that the item, used for securing clothing or bags, was treasure at an inquest last week. The silver hook tag was found in Brampton Abbotts in June 2007 by Maxine Jones, from Swansea. In a statement, she said she spent her spare time looking for treasure using a metal detector and had sought permission from Mr Scudamore, who owns the land where the item was found. After the discovery was made, the hook tag was sent to the British...

Ten years ago, at a spot known locally as "Black Rock", two men diving for sea cucumbers came across a large pile of sand and coral. Digging a hole, they reached in and pulled out a barnacle-encrusted bowl. Then another. And another. They had stumbled on the oldest, most important, marine archaeological discovery ever made in South East Asia, an Arab dhow - or ship - built of teak, coconut wood and hibiscus fibre, packed with a treasure that Indiana Jones could only dream of. There were 63,000 pieces of gold, silver and ceramics from the fabled Tang dynasty, which...

RARE Anglo Saxon jewellery worth an estimated £250,000 has revealed a fascinating link between East Cleveland and the royal family of 1,400 years ago. Exciting archeological finds dating back to the seventh century have been ruled to be treasure during five separate inquests at Teesside Coroners’ Court. Experts have described the finds as ‘unparallel in the North East’ after historians discovered 109 graves near Loftus from around 650AD - one of which is thought to have contained the body of a princess. Though the acidity in the soil means the remains no longer exist, dozens of high status items have...

ORANJEMUND, Namibia (AFP) - Archaeologists are racing against the little time left to salvage a fortune in coins and items from a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck found recently off Namibia's rough southern coast. Despite its importance, the project, in a restricted diamond mining area, is itself costing a fortune in sea-walling that cannot be sustained after October 10. "The vast amounts of gold coins would possibly make this discovery the largest one in Africa outside Egypt," said Francisco Alves, a Lisbon-based maritime archaeologist. "This vessel is the best preserved of its time outside Portugal," he said. "But the cultural uniqueness of...

When a Kent metal detecting enthusiast found something in a field of stubble he thought it looked interesting...and he was right! The gold pendant he discovered dated back more than 1,500 years and has been declared treasure trove. Fork lift truck driver Andy Sales, from Deal, found the ancient artefact near Worth. A coroner has declared the item treasure trove after an expert from the British Museum examined and dated it to between 491-518 AD. In his report to the hearing, the curator in early medieval coinage, Dr Gareth Williams, said it was a gold tremissis bearing the image of...