Saxon Silver Penny Hoard

Amazing. And in such great shape after being buried for 1,100 years?

Question: What does it mean when something is "declared treasure"?

So, the people who found the coins get nothing?

check out the Portable Antiquities Scheme website

https://finds.org.uk/

Thanks for sharing Lucky Cuss, very cool!

How many coins does it take to make a "hoard"? I was expecting a "hoard" to have a much larger number than 14.

The Treasure Act of 1996 specifies the numbers of coins needed to meet the definition of "Treasure" and trigger the Act; the number depends on the composition of the coins.
- For base metal (defined as "less than 10% gold or silver"): 10 coins or more
- For precious metal (more than 10% of either gold or silver): 2 coins or more.

Thus, for these silver Saxon coins, finding just one of them isn't Treasure, but finding two or more of them together is.

Note that the definition also gives an age limit: "at least 300 years old". The Act isn't interested in annexing modern non-historic coins. So, if you go out digging today and find two silver coins dated 1726, the Act applies. But if those same two coins were dated 1727, the Act doesn't apply, and it's "Finders Keepers" for you. But if go dig up those same two 1727 coins next year, the Act would apply to them.

It may seem arbitrary and convoluted, but as the Act states in the preamble, it's a simplified improvement over the previous Treasure Trove laws, which needed a Coronial inquest to be held whenever any gold or silver coins were found, to determine if the coins had been deliberately buried with intent to recover them later, or accidentally lost. If deemed accidentally lost, it wasn't Treasure and the finder could keep it, but if deliberately hidden, it was Treasure and the descendants of the ones who buried it still legally owned it and had to be tracked down. If those owners were unknown and/or could not be traced, only then did it belong to the Crown, which might (or might not) then give a reward to the finder. It was a whole long drawn-out legal process with lots of legal loopholes; for example, grave-robbing was technically not a crime under the old laws because objects in a grave were buried without the "intent of recovering them later".

In English history, "Saxon" is the common abbreviation for "Anglo-Saxon" when referring to a specific era or time period: circa 500 AD to the Norman conquest of 1066.

"Anglo-Saxon England" is the academically correct terminology, and the terminology used on Wikipedia for the time period, for example. But one does have to be careful in the popular press when referring to "Anglo-Saxons", as that term is also used today in the mainstream culture to describe modern white people generally rather than people and culture specific to that time period. The word "Saxon" by itself does not carry that same modern baggage, though does also carry some potential confusion in a broader European historical context with the German tribe and nation of that same name. And "Saxon" is not technically incorrect either, as this seems to be a name that the pre-Norman English people often called themselves in their own records.Those same ancient records refer to the Saxons still living back in Germany as "Old Saxons".