When I was quite young, I must have been about 7 give or take a year I suppose, I decided to dig a large hole in my garden. You know, its the kind of thing you do when you are a kid. I wanted to see how big a hole I could dig, and it ended up being about 2/3 as deep as I was tall. When I’d finished I decided to sieve out the earth I took out - I was sort of pretending I was an Archaeologist I think. I found an amazing array of different stones, but I did actually also find something of interest. This coin:

Now, I have no idea what it is. I suspect its Roman, but only because I once saw very similarly designed coins in a Roman Museum in St. Albans. I’ve always meant to take it somewhere to have it dated and explained to me. I don’t expect its worth much, despite it probably being very old, but I’d still like to know more about it.

I’ve posted it on Flickr, as a lazy way of looking for info on it. If that fails, I’m just going to have to go to the Museum.

UPDATE: I got a reply to my enquiry to Spink.com:

Dear Mr Pearce,

Thank you for your email.

The item you dug up is not a coin rather a brass jeton of the 16th or 17th centuries from the continent.

It would have been used as a counting chip by merchants.

These jetons are very common and not widely collected. It would be worth no more than a pound or two.

Yours sincerely,

David Guest

Ah well. I’ll heep hold of it either way, as I kind of like it. At least I know now I don’t need to get it insured.