Five years ago I moved from England to work in Switzerland. Here metal detecting is really interesting and exciting because being the cross roads of Europe you never know what ‘nationality’ of coin you will find next Swiss, French, German, Italian, Euros and so on. However what has eluded me all this time is a medieval hammered coin. I seem to have found everything else, including two Celtic coins, but never a medieval hammered. In reality I have given up the dream of finding one, even in one in a bad condition. So as luck would have it I had the opportunity to detect a small field at the end of my village for a couple of hours. After a short while I got that sweet ringing tone from my E-TRAC that I knew was silver. I was surprised because I had assumed I had found a pre-1970 silver1 Franc piece but it looked more like a St. Christopher. As I wiped the mud away it became apparent that I had found the most stunning high quality silver hammered coin.