Centuries ago someone in what is now Poland amassed quite a collection of silver coins. For some unknown reason, the owner of this massive hoard of silver coins decided to hide them in two pots deep in the forest. Whoever hid the coins did an exceptional job, because no one found them — until now.
Near a village named Guzów in Poland, a forest ranger found two clay pots while exploring the woods. The ancient ceramic pots were filled with thousands of silver coins. Upon making the discovery, the ranger quickly handed the coins over to the Archaeological Museum of the Middle Odra in Lubuskie. Barbara Bielinis Kopeć, the Lubuskie provincial conservator of monuments, weighed in on the finding.
“This is the greatest discovery of this kind made in…Lubuskie. After counting, it turned out that the pots contained 6,157 coins, including 5,370 smaller denarii and 787 larger Prague groschen,” Bielinis Kopeć said.
The coins are still in the process of being restored, so there’s still a lot left to learn. We do know that the coins range in date from 1516 to 1612 and that they’re in reasonably good condition. Many of the coins are stuck together, and conservators are working to break the coins apart without damaging them. As the coins are further cleaned, new dates and information may be revealed.
“For now, they are easily separated, (it’s difficult to determine whether) we can separate all of them without damage,” a conservator from the museum said.
A coin hoard of this size hasn’t been discovered in Poland since 1987, when a giant silver hoard was found in Glugów. That hoard is now known as the “Treasure of Glugów,” and is on display at the Museum of Archaeology and History in Glogów.
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