Seven men from Buckinghamshire unearth rare gold coins, to make £150k at auction

A group of treasure collectors found 600 rare coins in a field in Buckinghamshire. Their find is the biggest gold and silver collection discovered in the UK for around a decade. The Sun reports that their collection dubbed the "Hambleden Hoard," includes 12 gold nobles from the reign of Edward III.

Andrew Winter, Dom Rapley, Eryk Wierucki, Jaroslaw Giedyna, Dariusz Fijalkowski and brothers Tobiasz and Mateusz Nowak are the lucky group of men who were accustomed to digging up shotgun shells and thimbles but were astonished to find coin after coin on the Culden Faw Estate in April.

In the span of four days, they discovered 627 coins - including 12 ultra-rare full gold nobles from the time of the Black Death. The 12 nobles are described to be from 1346 to 1351 and are extremely rare with only 12 known examples found during a 1963 survey.

The group shared that they even had to sleep in a tent by the hole to protect their finds from thieves who might poach their dig. At the time of the find, Mateusz Nowak, said: "It felt unreal.

After finding the hoard, and then clearing the area, we had to extend the search twice more because we were finding so much."

On the first day of the group's search, they had already found 276 silver coins and nine gold nobles. In an interview, they all admitted that they could not sleep through the night due to overwhelming excitement. Some of them have been practising the hobby for less than a year when they chanced upon incredible luck.

In just three days the team's hoard grew to 545 silver coins plus fragments, and 12 gold nobles. They are now encouraging everyone to take a renewed interest in looking for antiques in open fields. Rare coins and valuable notes can be worth tens of thousands of times their face value when sold at auctions and bought by various museums and avid collectors.