A fortunate couple is planning to sell an astounding trove of 264 gold coins they discovered hidden beneath the floor of their house for £250,000.
A cup full to the brim with coins that are up to 400 years old was discovered by the unknown couple when they were sweeping the kitchen floor. Metal detectorists may spend years looking for such a treasure trove.
The amazing find was found six inches under the concrete at an 18th-century detached home in the North Yorkshire hamlet of Ellerby.
The owners, who have been in their home for more than ten years, were so surprised that they originally believed their find to be an electricity cable.
But when they pulled it out from beneath the floor, they discovered a salt-glazed ceramic cup that was roughly the same size as a Coke can and contained the cache of money.
When they looked more closely, they discovered gold coins with dates ranging from 1610 to 1727, which included the reigns of James I, Charles I, and George I.
A specialist was sent to the couple’s residence to assess the cache after they called Spink & Son, a London-based auction house.
The coins were identified as belonging to the Fernley-Maisters, a prominent and affluent Hull merchant family.
Early in the 1700s, the Maister family traded in iron ore, coal, and wood, and later generations became Whig legislators and members of Parliament.
During the lives of Joseph Fernley and his wife Sarah Maister, the coins were accumulated. Fernley passed away in 1725, and his widow stayed at Ellerby until she passed away at the age of 80 in 1745.
The coins were found in July 2019, and they may now be legally reclaimed and sold at auction. They are estimated to be worth a total of £250,000.
A George I guinea with a mint mistake from 1720 is the star of the auction. The coin, which features two “tail” sides rather than a king’s head, is anticipated to sell for £4,000.
A Charles II guinea dated 1675 that has the king’s Latin name misspelt as CRAOLVS rather than CAROLVS is estimated to be worth £1,500.
Gregory Edmund, the auctioneer, said: “This is a remarkable and quite significant find. Hoards of English gold coins never appear on the market, which is quite uncommon.
“This discovery of more than 260 coins is also one of the biggest in British archaeological history.
It was a wholly accidental finding. The owners discovered a gold-filled pot the size of a Diet Coke can while refinishing their home’s floor.
They have never in their lives used a metal detector. They first believed it to be an electricity wire even though they were just mending a floor.
A few days later, “I hurried up to visit them in North Yorkshire and there were 264 gold pieces in this cup – it is incomprehensible, I have no clue how they managed to squeeze that many in that pot,” I said.
The coins’ range of dates, from 1610 to 1727, is unusually wide for a trove.
It also begs the issue of why, at the start of the 18th century, when they had banks and bank notes — all the things that indicated hoarding shouldn’t have occurred any more — someone would have chosen to bury a significant amount of coins.
Its contents scarcely qualify as “mind-blowing”; rather, they merely represent the £50 and £100 coins of regular trade that their rich owner inexplicably buried and never found.
They are coins that have had a difficult existence; they are not mint-perfect coins.
However, the quantity of coins and distinctive burial technique provide a rare chance to understand the complex English economy during the early years of the Bank of England and the widespread mistrust of its novel innovation, the “banknote.”
“It is a spectacular and utterly unexpected finding from such an ordinary find area,” said the researcher.
It is thus a tremendous honour to be able to properly record and analyse this trove for the benefit of future generations.
As a coin expert with many years of experience, I cannot remember a comparable find in living memory.
In October, the Ellerby Hoard will be auctioned off.