I have been detecting for years now, no treasure or hidden stash found till now. On a cloudy autumn day together with two fellow "diggers" we decided to go out and scan a forest near Ploiesti, Romania. It was going to be probably one of the last detecting trips for the year of 2013 because it was getting colder each day and in the winter we usually take a long break from our hobby.
We arrived at the chosen location in the morning, left the car near an abandoned house and entered the forest by foot. After walking for about 5 minutes through a thick wood we had reached a nice location, no bushes, no tall weeds only trees and clean ground covered by a thin coating of dried leaves. We started swinging our detectors and tried to cover as much ground as possible. For a few hours we found several beer cans, spent bullet cases, wires and other kind of trash we were already sick of. Then, suddenly, near a young tree I got a strange target. It was shown on my metal detector screen in the same place some tin cans appeared till now but didn’t seem to be a single solid target, more like a tin can was ripped apart and scattered over a small area. I stuck my shovel in the ground and dug a small 2 inches deep hole. There, in the ground it was laying what seemed to be a big coin full of dirt. I was expecting to be a worthless 1950 communist coin as countless times before but after removing the dirt from the coin’s surface I was surprised to be holding in my hand a shiny silver Thrakien tetradachme. Full of hope I called in my friends to help me scan the surroundings while I kept digging at the first discovery’s spot and found one coin after another. After each recovered coin I was swinging again the detector and there was yet another target, deeper or a little bit to the left or right to the previous one’s position.
After a few more of this coins found I was left with a deeper signal, under a root. I had asked for my friends help to dig under the root and after a few minutes of hard work we found a fistful of roman republic silver denars and two or three pieces of what it seemed to be a clay cup. A few more of the coins were scattered in the area up to 10 meters from the place of the first finding. After a while we found ourselves surrounded by darkness, it was getting late, and the forest was preventing the weak autumn light of a cloudy sky from reaching the ground. We left the location, went home and the next day we went with the coins at the National History Museum in Bucharest, Romania to announce the discovery and the possible location of a feature archeological site. We were so happy with our discovery that till then we didn’t even counted the coins. It turned out that there were about 100 silver tetradachma and denars in the lot. We’re now expecting updates from the museum after they will finish analyzing the coins.
Xess - Romania
