LONDON.- Builder, Don Crawley has been a keen metal detectorist for over 30 years and in March 2017 found a hoard of Anglo Saxon 99 Silver pennies in Suffolk. Today (Wednesday, December 4, 2019), they sold at Dix Noonan Webb, the international coins, medals, banknotes and jewellery specialists for £90,000 in their two-day auction of Coins, Tokens and Historical Medals on Wednesday & Thursday, December 4 & 5, 2019. The provisional estimate for the hoard is £30,000-£50,000.

As Don explains: “It was my first visit to this farmers land in Suffolk. After walking up an incline in the field, my Deus detector gave off a strong signal and within a short space of time I had recovered 93 coins.” He continued: “The Finds Liaison Officer was called in and they investigated the site which turned out to be a long forgotten Saxon church which had been dismantled by the Normans in the 11th century. Excavating around they uncovered the remains of human bones and I found another 6 coins!” The hoard was taken to the British Museum who examined the coins stating they were Silver pennies from the reign of Aethelred II who reigned in England from AD 978-1016. It remained at the British Museum until they were disclaimed in August of this year.

After the auction, Don said: “I am totally amazed at today’s auction and loved every minute! I will probably never experience anything like this again.”

As DNW’s Antiquities specialist, Nigel Mills, explains: “This is a fantastic result for Don, and shows how the prices realised at auction for a newly found hoard can exceed everyone’s expectations.”

The coins came from several different mints and among the highest prices was an extremely rare small cross mule from the reign of Æthelred II (978-1016), from a London mint which sold to a European Collector for £13,640* against an estimate of £800-1,000 [Lot 61]. The hoard included two rare mints - Melton Mowbray and a previously unrecorded mint in Louth, which is in Lincolnshire. The coin from Melton Mowbray fetched £8,400 – it had been expected to fetch £3,00-4,000 [Lot 36], while the coins from Louth, which had both been estimated to fetch £4,00-5,000 sold for £10,540 to an English Collector and £6,820 to an International Dealer respectively [Lots 33 and 34]. Louth had been a “Burh” or fortified settlement in the 10th century with a church containing the remains of St Herefrith. It is thought that the hoard appears to have been buried by a pilgrim who was making penitence worried about the impending apocalypse of the Millennium.