Transcript of Treasure hunters unearth 1000-year-old silver coins from Norman Conquest | BBC News

A hoard of silver pennies from the time of the Norman Conquest has been bought for £4.3 million, making it the highest value treasure ever found in the UK. The 2,000 pennies were uncovered by a group of metal detectorists in Somerset. Ellie Price caught up with one of the friends who couldn't believe his luck.

Oh, my God. There's pennies everywhere. The staff of detectorists dreams. A hoard of coins undiscovered for nearly a thousand years. That find, 2,584 coins to be precise, was back in 2019. Today, it turns out it's the highest-valued treasure ever found in the UK.

It's been almost six years to get to this point, so the initial excitement of finding it and the momentum, it then slowed with COVID. It's like winning the lottery and not being able to cash your ticket in.

A ticket worth £4.3 million. That money, of course, split between the seven friends who found it and the landowner.

I've been able to buy a house now, mortgage-free. So yeah, it's changed my life.

Horses like this one have to come through the British Museum in the process to decide whether or not they're treasure. There are, on average, around 14,000 finds that come through, and of those, about 1,500 are declared as treasure.

It contains twice as many coins of Harold II, and nearly five times as many William I coins than have ever previously been found. The coins will end up back in Somerset, as will Adam, as he plans more treasure hunts.

Every time you dig a hole, you don't know what you're going to get. Before you see it, you're always excited. Even if it's rubbish, the edge of it might look like gold.