One of the amazing surprises on our '97 tour was the quality of the coins found in East Anglia. We have always had fairly good luck detecting on all our tours, but that year stood out above all others in the condition of the coins. For that reason, we returned to East Anglia in 1998 and will be going there again in 1999. From the "greenies" (17th -20th century coppers) to the medieval hammered silver coins, the faces and inscriptions were stronger than we have every experienced before. David and I have some ideas why and I will save them for an article in W&ET. Not only were they in excellent shape, but the volume of hammereds found was far greater than on any previous tour. In fact, we got more large hammereds, such as Shillings, Groats and Half Groats than we would normally expect. The reason for this is probably because few of the fields we used had ever been hunted before and the large coins are the first to go.

Digging was tough at times because of the stubble, but the results were worth it. We found fewer Romans than we expected on this tour, but the success of a day's detecting is well articulated by Brian Cross and Mo, well-known English detectorists, in their article in the November '97 issue of the Searcher magazine where they wrote:

"... most English detectorists look upon hammered coins as a measure of their success. If you haven't found a hammered and you are into the medieval period then you don't consider yourself as having 'made it' until you have found your first hammered coin, no matter how battered it is!"

I guess now you can understand why I am so eager to return. Of course we can never promise what you will find, but you can always be assured that David will use his research skills to select the best possible fields to detect.