In the summer of 2023, on a fine sunny day, a group of people were gathered in a grassy pasture somewhere deep in the Nantwich countryside.
Penny Vickers was one of those people, a long-standing member of the Crewe and Nantwich Metal Detecting Society, and it was her first outing without her dog Holly, who had passed away only three weeks earlier.
Cover picture: Holly and the 1799 gold coin.
AI-assisted photo illustration created from photographs supplied by Penny Vickers.
Holly had been a constant companion to Penny for sixteen years, and had accompanied her on many detecting rallies during that time.
Still mourning the loss of Holly, Penny had been encouraged by her brother to attend the rally organised by the well-known Cheshire society.
Penny said, “Anyone who has gone through losing a cherished pet knows the pain.”
As the rally started that day, Penny assembled her Deus metal detector, switched it on, and then altered the program and the ground balance settings. Armed with the latest technology, the group set off in the hope they would discover artefacts buried centuries ago under the short grass and furrows.
The group was detecting in fields that have been investigated before, but Penny acknowledged, “As we know, no field is ever completely done.”
As time passed and a natural break approached, Penny decided to make her way back across the pasture for coffee. On her way, she continued to sweep the Deus across the grass, stopping occasionally to unearth copper coins and buttons. As she made her way further towards the car, a weak signal sounded and appeared on the detector’s display. At first, Penny was inclined to ignore it.
“It really was a scratchy signal, and a toss-up between digging it out and that cup of coffee, but ‘when in doubt dig it out’ as the metal detectorist’s mantra says, so I started to dig.”
When Penny first spied a glint of gold, she thought it must be a gold milk bottle top.
“I’d never found a gold coin before, and so it was the last thing on my mind.”
After placing the gold coin in her hand and taking a closer look, she realised what it was.
Photo: The gold George III third of a guinea coin dated 1799. Penny Vickers
“It was a small coin, about the size of an old decimal half mobile.” Penny knew that what she’d actually found was a 1799 George III third of a guinea gold coin.
News spread quickly and other members rushed over to congratulate her on the find and to request the ‘gold dance’. However, for Penny, the moment was filled with memories of her beloved dog Holly.
Penny said, “It suddenly meant nothing to me because I had recently lost Holly, who was a far greater treasure.” Congratulations soon turned to sympathy as people realised the recency and depth of Penny’s grief.
“If I had found this coin while detecting on my own, I would not have had this interaction with such kind people. Instead, I would have been in the middle of a field on my own, and probably crying.”
Later, another member of the club remarked how he had been detecting for over forty years and had never found gold, demonstrating how rare the occasion really was.
After the initial furore subsided, Penny was able to finally sit down with a coffee and rang her brother to tell him the news. It was then she revealed the plan she’d had if she ever discovered gold. Penny told him about the BBC ‘Only Fools and Horses’ scene she was going to relive with Holly.
“I told him that if Holly was with me when I found gold, we were going to have a ‘Del-Boy and Rodney’ moment in the car, (the episode where they come out of the auction room after the Harrison timepiece sold for several million) and our car too would be rocking.”
After being encouraged by her brother to carry on and detect for the remainder of the rally, and to see the gold as a gift from Holly, Penny continued to sweep the field and found something that could be seen as a strange coincidence — a dog tag.
Initially, the gold coin was added to Penny’s collection but on further reflection, she made the decision to return all her finds to the landowners or museums along with the stories of how they were found.
“For me, each thing I find has a story to tell as do the fields we detect.”
She went on to add, “A landowner could have lost this gold coin as he walked or rode across the field or it could have been the wages of a farm worker and its loss could have had a significant impact on their life, such as food or starvation. The coin has its own story and now Holly and I are part of it, but it will go on to its next chapter.”
Although Penny’s first ever gold find turned out to be a touching reminder of her beloved pet, she said if there is a next time, and even with her ‘two left feet’, she will definitely perform the coveted gold dance.