The week I found a Roman coin hoard in my neighbor's field felt like winning the lottery

I was helping a farmer buddy dig a drainage ditch outside York back in June of 2019, and we pulled out this clump of 22 bronze coins that turned out to be from the 3rd century, but the real surprise was how the soil had preserved every bit of detail on the emperor's face - has anyone else stumbled onto something totally unexpected while doing something boring like digging a hole?

3 comments

3 Comments

williamhenderson1d ago

Hit a rock while planting some shrubs last spring and it turned out to be a fossilized whale vertebra. Not quite Roman gold but still pretty neat for a Saturday afternoon. Guess that's my lottery win for the next decade or two.

amyh121d ago

Oh wow, that's wild! I used to think fossil finds were just for scientists or people on those TV shows, but hearing about you hitting a rock and finding a whale vertebra definitely changed my mind. I mean, @williamhenderson, that's next level yard work luck.

robert_ross9519h ago

Wait, hold up. Ngl I had to read that twice because my brain just couldn't process it. You hit a rock with a shovel and it turned out to be a whale vertebra from millions of years ago? That's absolutely insane, like lottery-level lucky. Honestly I've dug up so many random rocks in my yard and not a single one was anything close to that cool. Tbh I would've probably just chucked it back in the dirt thinking it was some weird concrete chunk. That's the kind of story you tell at parties and nobody believes you until you pull out the actual bone.