A metal detectorist is celebrating today after an extremely rare 700-year-old gold coin he unearthed sold for £173,000. The Edward III 'leopard' coin, which was minted in 23-carat gold at the Tower of London, is one of five known surviving examples.
It was dug up by Andy Carter, 65, who found it 10ins below the surface in a muddy field in Reepham, Norfolk, in October 2019. At first he thought he had found a worthless metal button until he wiped off the mud and saw a glint of gold. The knowledgeable treasure hunter realised immediately that it was a 'leopard coin', prompting him to do a little dance in the field.
The coin, which weighs 3.5 grams, was struck in 1344 and was King Edward III's ill-fated attempt to use gold coinage to facilitate European trade. It depicts a crowned leopard sitting upright carrying the quartered arms of England and France. It had a face value of three shillings but was in circulation for just seven months before being withdrawn.
Between January and July 1344, £32,000 worth of gold was minted in three denominations - the double leopard, leopard and helm. Only three double leopards, five leopards and five helms are known today, making them highly desirable to collectors.
Mr Carter's coin attracted international bidding when it went under the hammer at London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb. It eventually sold for a hammer price of £140,000. With auction house fees added on the buyer will pay £173,000. Mr Carter, a retired research biologist from Norwich, will have to split the proceeds 50/50 with the landowner.
Mr Carter, who attended the auction, said: "I had butterflies in my tummy all day. Usually I have a full English breakfast when I stay in a hotel but this morning I could only manage toast.
"People who sat next to me at the auction kept telling me to breathe because my face must have been turning purple. My hands were shaking for quite a while afterwards. I had to have a strong coffee.
"This really is a life-changing sum of money. A few years ago I got made redundant after being a scientist for 40 years - this is more than my retirement and redundancy package altogether.
"I will be going for a celebratory meal, maybe by then I'll be able to breathe again. We'll definitely get a new kitchen out of it and a trip to New Zealand because my daughter lives out there."
Recalling the stunning discovery, Mr Carter, a father-of-two, said: "Anyone could have found this coin - in a field, in their back garden. It's in the lap of the gods. I was attending a rally with 30 other detectorists and on the day there were not that many signals.
"By 3.30pm, most people had given up and I was still in the field and I could see them in the car park. I thought I better hurry up but I would just go to the corner of the field and back and that's when I picked up a faint signal.
"I dug down 10ins and I thought it was a metal button at first. Then I saw the gold coin lying at the bottom of the hole covered in mud. It looked like a half noble, which is an exciting find but worth a few hundred pounds. However, when I brushed away the mud I saw the leopard and the inscription, and I knew it was an Edward III coin. I was so excited I did a gold dance around the find - which is like a bad dad dance. I'm lucky nobody saw me!
"It's still surreal to think about it. I was just ridiculously lucky."
Of the four other leopard coins, two are in the British Museum in London, one is at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and one is in a private collection. The coin sparked a bidding war when it went under the hammer with London-based auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb.
Nigel Mills, consultant in artefacts and antiquities at Dix Noonan Webb, said: "Edward III was keen to have a gold coinage to facilitate trade with our European counterparts, however the reasons for its failure are threefold.
"That the mint charges for the manufacture of the coins was too high. The denominations of the coins were awkward and did not fit into the domestic money of account, none being divisible either into the mark or the pound, and most telling perhaps is that the coins were overvalued in relation to silver.
"This advice came from the Italian Florentine bankers who were the foreign exchange dealers of the time, precisely the people with most to lose with the establishment of a successful English gold and silver coinage. Seven years were to pass before the correct ratio was applied.
"The coin is in very fine condition and retains light surface marks consistent with a field find. Only five are known to still exist and this is by far the finer of the two known specimens that have come to auction.
"The other three were all sold at auction before 1960 and two are now in the British Museum, and the third is at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford."
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