A rare Roman coin, believed to be fthe firstof its kind discovered in the UK, has been sold for nearly £5,000 at auction.
According to BBC, a 76-year-old man named Ron Walters, from Kingswinford, West Midlands, found the coin in Wall Heath near Dudley with his metal detector in 2024.
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Mark Hannam, from Fieldings Auctioneers in Stourbridge, announced that a collector from Scotland bought the coin for £4,700 on Friday, March 28, 2025.
He said, “Even though it's been in the soil for over 1,900 years, he's very pleased to add it to his collection. To find a coin from AD 69 is incredibly rare. Most coins we find in this country are from the third and fourth centuries, and we are talking about a time when the gold was at its purest level."
The coin which is thought to be the one and only of its kind found in the British Isles belongs to AD69, potraying the emperor Aulus Vitellius.
Vitellius rules only for the short period of eight months during a civil war known as the "Year of the Four Emperors".
Moreover, Walter will get half of the money, while the farmer who owns the land where the coin was found will get the other half.
Walters told BBC Radio WM, “Anything's a bonus. Normally the things that you find, you put in your collection because they're not worth selling on. It's surprising what comes up; not just coins, it can be anything. Belt buckles, buttons, they've all got a story to tell."
Notably, the coin sold for considerably less than the only other similar artefact that was sold in Switzerland last year for around £50,000.
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