How About Some Found Gold...?

We can always find stories of folks looking for buried treasure, but what about the people that actually find some ?

Here is a story about a man who was down on his luck, but soon after he started hunting for some spare coins turned bad luck into good!

Staffordshire Hoard

Photo credit: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Metal detector enthusiast Terry Herbert was down on his luck. He asked a farmer friend if he could scan his field to find a few coins. Within days, he had discovered more than 10 pounds of treasure. This piqued the interest of local archaeologists, who decided to investigate the field themselves. They discovered more than 4,000 fragments of seventh-century artifacts.

After archaeologists pieced together all of the fragments, they saw that they had hundreds of completed items. Most of the treasure was warlike: sword decorations and helmets. The only non-martial pieces were three religious objects: two crosses and an engraved Bible verse.

Archaeologists were unsure why the hoard was buried. Some believed that the artifacts were booty captured during battles; the victors would have buried the loot for safe keeping. Others believed that the hoard represented an offering to the gods. Many of the objects were bent or broken before they were buried. This was a custom of Germanic tribes: They would break or “kill” the weapons before they buried them so that they would be sent to the gods in the spirit world.

This was the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found. Local museums purchased the treasure for £3,285,000 ($5.3 million).

I'd say this man's luck had become much, much better! I wouldn't mind a bit of that myself.

Coffee out on the patio again this morning. I'm loving this weather!