2,000-year-old gold coin found in East Yorkshire field 'only second of kind ever found'
Experts believe a 2,000-year-old gold coin unearthed by a metal detectorist in an East Yorkshire field is only the second ever of its kind found.
Minted on the other side of the river Humber in Lincolnshire in around 50 to 10BC, it is not known how it came to be buried on land near Lelley, a village in Holderness eight miles from Hull.
The reason why experts are so excited are the five points on the coin – only one other coin like it has been found.
The gold “stater” was made by the Corieltavi, an Iron Age Celtic tribe that occupied most of the East Midlands, including all of Lincolnshire, right up to the south bank of the Humber.
Lelley, however, was in the territory of the Parisi tribe which occupied a swathe of East Yorkshire.
The coin which is only the size of the old decimal halfpenny, weighs 5.5 grams and is made up of 33% gold, 54% copper and 9.5% silver.
Coralie Thomson, a specialist with auctioneers David Duggleby, where it is going under the hammer in an online auction starting on Thursday, said: “The stater is of the ‘domino’ type, so called because of the pellets that appear in a rectangular frame above an abstract depiction of a horse on the coin.”
“It is the fifth pellet on this coin that make it so incredibly rare. Corieltavi staters always had four pellets - or so everyone thought until a five-domino variant was unearthed in Northamptonshire last year.
“One extra pellet might seem insignificant but in terms of collectable desirability it is an absolute game changer.”
The pre-sale estimate was £2,000 to £4,000.
Coralie said the reason the Corieltavian mint at Sleaford added an extra pip to the domino on a very small number of coins is a mystery. The answer could be as simple as the fact that a die used to create the coins was recut after becoming worn and at that stage acquired an extra pellet.
There has also been speculation that it may be a variation in mintmarks or issue date or gold content or something else that isn’t known at the moment.
No one knows why Corieltavi gold turned up in Parisi territory, and Coralie said it was likely as a result of trading as the two tribes were “apparently pretty civilised - at least by Iron Age standards”.