16th Century Silver Coins Cache Discovery In St. Petersburg Region, Russia
Wire Money - Early Russian Hammered Coins
The next signal sounded very unusual by its tone. I knew I had heard that signal before (more in my story on Metal Detecting at the Kozheritsy Village Site). It was weak and soft and was also changing its intensity as I repositioned the 10.5" coil at 90 degrees angle. I pinpointed the target and started digging it up. After I pulled the dirt plug out, I could not get any signal either from the plug nor the hole.
Usually, iron targets of a small and medium size would behave that way after the "Halo Effect" would be destroyed by digging. But this target did not sound like iron in the beginning. I flipped the plug and scanned its top with coil. Now I got a signal back! I realized that a target was initially near the surface. Due to its small size, the target gave me a weak signal which made me assume that the target was buried deep. I carefully sliced the top 2 inches of the plug and investigated the piece. Unexpectedly a tiny silver coin appeared!
Because of its oval shape, I knew right away that it was so called "Wire Money" type of early Russian coins. To make such coin, a piece of silver wire was cut off at certain length and hammered flat, then, a design was hammered on both sides. These coins had earned a slang word "Fish Scales" because of their small size and thinness. Among Russian treasure hunters, such coins are considered the toughest ones to detect.
1533-1584 1 Kopek (minted during the rule of "Ivan The Terrible")
Then Another "Fish Scale" Was Discovered...
And Another...
As soon as Vasily came to my "hot" spot, he just eyeballed two "hammereds" lying right on the surface! Besides pure joy expressed on his face, a true surprise was also shown: "How these coins could be missed by previous treasure hunters?!" The field had not been plowed for at least a couple of years.
A Silver Coin Would Make Any Treasure Hunter Happy!
We searched the spot (10 yards by 5 yards) for hours! Basically, such a productive spot would be called a "Coin Dispersal"—a result of the field plow hitting the upper part, an "iceberg tip", of the coin cache and bringing the coins up to the surface. Over many years, the subsequent field plowing would spread the coins in a triangle shape pattern on the ground. …At the end of our lucky day, we counted 34 hammered silver coins from 16th century among other coins!
A Nice Little Pile of Silver Hammered Coins
And All Finds of the Day
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