I have been detecting with Whites machines since 1985. Since 1991, I have been using a Whites Eagle 2 SL90, and each time I think of upgrading to a new XLT, I find something interesting which makes me want to keep it. In 1996 I found a very nice Roman silver siliqua. Two aspects of the coin made me think it might be from a hoard.


My son John, who is 15, has detected for 4 years on his own and prior to that he helped me dig my finds up.
John's first detector was a Whites Classic 2 SL, and he found many excellent finds including hammered coins and lots of bronze Roman coins, with some Roman silver coins.
But some of my fields were difficult for him, and as he was going to be coming out regularly with me
I decided he should have a better detector. So we bought a new XLT from Mick Tyrell at Newbury. On his first day out with the XLT John found a cut-half at 2 inches on a very bumpy ploughed field. This as an excellent indication of the qualities of the XLT in difficult conditions.

In July we noticed that the field where I had found the siliqua had just been harvested.
I put on my 5-inch head for my Eagle so I could get in between the stubble rows,
and this was to prove invaluable as we started finding more siliqua.
John was using his XLT with 10-inch polo head and he found some loose coins where the stubble was flattened. But we realised that we needed to do a more thorough search.

We decided to dig all signals in all metal, in order to clear the whole area. After several hours John got an unusual signal on the XLT, which was very broad and the meter indicated it was very deep. After digging down 12 inches he found one siliqua and there was a still a large signal in the hole. After enlarging the hole we started to dig downwards and found some more coins and a piece of grey ware.
More broken pieces of pottery were found and there were more coins in large clumps of earth. These were all placed in a large plastic bag, so that they wouldn't be scratched.
The biggest mass of coins was at a depth of 15 inches. Then the biggest surprise of all �
we saw the unmistakable glint of gold! There were three gold coins close together in the soil, together with some larger silver coins called miliarense.

We took all of the coins home. As we counted them we realised that there were many more than we had realised as we lifted them from the soil.
There were over 1,125 whole siliqua, 32 miliarense, and 3 gold Solidus! Although some of the coins were in pieces, over 1,100 were in excellent condition and had not been clipped.
In fact they looked as if they had not been circulated at all.
As we started to identify the siliqua we found there were excellent examples of Emperors from Constans (AD 337-350) to Honorius (AD 393-423).
There were examples of mints from all over the Roman Empire including - France, Germany, Greece, Turkey and Italy.

I would like to finish by saying that I am convinced that it was the XLT�s special deep seeking capabilities that enabled John to find that elusive signal that led to our find of a lifetime.