In 1985 Roger Mintey took up metal detecting and living in Reigate already knew of a hoard of 987 medieval coins which had been discovered there in 1972. For five years Roger carried on his hobby finding the usual everyday items such as musket balls, buttons, rings and various other items.

On Saturday 22nd September 1990 Roger had two hours to kill before it went dark and so decided to go to a nearby field. A medieval trackway ran about 50 yards away and as the field was shortly to be developed, Roger felt it was worth 'one last go'. Almost as soon as he started detecting Roger picked up a massive signal but thought his detector had gone out of tune. He retuned the machine and moved on.

After an hour or so he'd found nowt but junk and found himself over the massive signal again. This time he decided to dig the signal, it was going dark and he didn't have time for more detecting anyway. Six inches down he encountered hard cracked clay and carefully removed two blocks. He removed more earth and bits of pottery then found two medieval groats. Pulling away at the pottery in the hole revealed masses of coins stacked vertically in concentric circles at the bottom of the hole. It was a medieval coin hoard.

By 10.45 pm that night Roger had a heavy bucketful of medieval coins, silver and gold, containing about 2500 coins!

Roger and the local archaeologist spent all the next day digging and checking the hole. In all they retrieved 6,705 coins, 138 gold and the rest silver. The hoard dated from 1272 to 1455 (as did the 1972 hoard) and contained gold nobles, half-nobles and quarters and silver groats, half-groats and pennies. It is the largest post-1351 UK hoard on record. One coin, a Henry 6th Leaf Trefoil half-noble, was previously unrecorded. Also in the hoard were 11 French gold saluts, 21 Scottish silver coins and 6 other non-English issues.