Two amateur history enthusiasts have been accused of trying to sell ancient coins from a Viking hoard to representatives of a mystery American buyer who were in fact undercover police officers.
Roger Pilling, 74, of Rossendale, Lancashire, and Craig Best, 46, of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, are facing a jury trial at Durham crown court.
They have denied a joint charge of conspiring to convert criminal property, namely the Anglo-Saxon coins, for money. They also deny separate charges of possessing criminal property.
Matthew Donkin, opening the case for the prosecution, said the two men had known that the culturally important coins from the reign of Alfred the Great came from a Viking hoard. The court was told the value of one particularly rare coin had been estimated at £70,000 while the combined value of the coins, 44 in total, was about £766,000.
But it was not just monetary value that was important, Donkin said, it was also “the historical and cultural value of the items”. In particular, they shine a light on ninth-century politics and the relationship between Alfred, the king of Wessex, and Coenwulf, the king of Mercia often portrayed as a Viking puppet.
The jury was told there would be “history lessons” for them during the course of what could be a four-week trial.
Donkin said the prosecution did not allege that the two men were the original finders of the coins. “But someone discovered them,” he said. “They are extremely rare, ancient coins and they have been dug up or unearthed by someone who chose not to declare them.”
The rightful owner of the coins, he said, was the crown.
The two men were arrested after an undercover police operation, the court heard. They had thought that a man, “Hugh”, was a broker and “Max” was a coin expert when they had in fact been police. The prosecution alleged Best took three coins to a meeting in a Durham hotel bar.
Donkin said the conspiracy to sell the coins began in 2018, when Best had contacted a US radiology professor at the University of Michigan, Ronald Bude, who was also a collector and lecturer on coins.
Bude’s first assessment of the coins had been that they were fake and he said he was consulting an expert at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Donkin said Best was not pleased by this and his email reply to Bude was significant. It read: “They are a hoard as you know they are this can cause me problems all you had to do was say you didn’t want them and that was the end of it.”
The court heard Best had also told Bude the coins were so good that he would need to fly over for them. In an email he had said: “These coins are big money I will send you a sim card with them all on if you want. I am looking at £2-250k for all of these that’s how good they are.”
The Fitzwilliam expert had recognised the coins as genuine and included a “King Alfred two-emperors type silver penny”. Donkin said: “Prior to 2015, only two coins of that type had been discovered.” News of the discovery had then spread through the community of coins professionals.
Donkin said the jury would hear evidence from Dr Gareth Williams, a curator of early medieval coins at the British Museum. He would say that the coins dated from AD874 to AD879 and had been issued in Wessex and Mercia. “The majority of the coins are of a comparatively rare type known as cross or lozenge,” said Donkin. “Two of them are the extremely rare two-emperor type.”
Williams was also expected to say “that the coins in this case are extremely significant for our understanding of the history of the unification of England”, the court heard.
He would say that ninth-century history was almost exclusively written at the court of Alfred, and Coenwulf had been described dismissively as a puppet of the Vikings. The coins in question showed there had been a monetary alliance between Alfred and Coenwulf, which must have followed a political alliance.
Donkin told the court Pilling and Best would claim that they did not know the coins were treasure.
The trial continues.
