The ancient Romans definitely had a habit of hiding their most prized possessions. To date, more than 17,000 coin hoards have been unearthed in Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia, along with other stunning treasures.
Just this month, a trove of 3,000 ancient coins and gems was discovered in northern Italy near modern-day Bologna. Archaeologists have only explored 10% of the "magical place" so far, meaning many more treasures could soon be discovered. Although these latest finds have yet to be valued, Roman hoards can sell for mind-blowing sums, as the following examples show. Read on for 15 of the most valuable Roman hauls of all time. All dollar amounts in US dollars.
Amateur metal detectorist Dave Crisp struck it lucky in April 2010 when he stumbled upon a hoard of Roman coins packed in a pot-bellied jar while searching for treasure in a field near Frome in the English county of Somerset. Archaeologists had to smash the jar to get to the contents, but destroying the ancient container proved worthwhile.
A staggering 52,203 silver and bronze coins from the third and fourth centuries AD were revealed. As well as being the second-largest Roman coin stash found in Britain, the hoard includes the biggest collection ever found of coins issued during the reign of rogue emperor Carausius.
After much debate, the stash was valued at $395,000, which equates to $550,000 (£442k) today, and bought by the Museum of Somerset. As for Crisp, he got a generous share of the proceeds of the sale, as did the landowners.
In April 2016, construction workers were doing maintenance work in the Olivar del Zaudín Park in Tomares near Seville in Spain when their digger uncovered 19 Roman amphorae (tall ceramic jugs).
Though 10 of the ancient storage containers were broken by the excavator, the vessels were successfully retrieved together with their contents – an estimated 53,208 Roman bronze coins dating from between 294 AD and 312 AD.
The largest hoard of Roman coins discovered in Spain, the Treasure of Tomares was promptly claimed by the Spanish State and has since been the subject of intense study by archaeologists and numismatists (coin experts) from the University of Seville.
In 2019, the stash was valued at $500,000, which translates to $593,000 (£477k) in 2023, and in accordance with Spain's Historical Heritage Law the construction workers who found it were granted a 25% share.
Back to Somerset, where cousins Kevin and Martin Elliott made the find of their lives when metal detecting on the family farm in the village of Shapwick near Glastonbury, England, one fateful day in September 1998. There, in the middle of a field, the amateur treasure hunters homed in on a hoard of 9,262 Roman coins dating from around 31 BC to 224 AD, including the biggest-ever haul of silver denarii found in the UK and two ultra-rare coins that hadn't been discovered in the country before.
The cache was actually buried under a Roman villa, which was later excavated, adding to the significance of the find. Experts went on to value the hoard, which represented 10 years' pay for a Roman legionary, at $327,000, or $597,000 (£480k) in today's money.
As per the UK Treasure Act, the cousins got the full award. Like the Frome Hoard, the haul is now on display in the Museum of Somerset, having been snapped up thanks to grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and other organisations.
Somerset is something of a hotspot for Roman hoards – particularly Bath, which was the go-to spa town for Romano-Britons. In November 2007, a stash of 17,577 silver and bronze Roman coins dating from between 32 BC and 274 AD was uncovered by archaeologists during a routine dig at a site on Beau Street, where a hotel was being built.
The hoard was eventually valued at $462,000 in 2014, which is around $704,000 (£576k) today, and purchased by the Roman Baths Museum with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Unlike the aforementioned amateurs, the archaeologists got nothing, but the landowner was awarded 50% of the haul's value.
Legends no doubt in metal detectorist circles, Peter Humphries and John Booth discovered the UK's largest Roman coin hoard in a field on Crown Estate land near Mildenhall in Wiltshire, England back in 1978. All in all, 54,951 mostly base silver coins from around 274 AD were found stuffed in a jar and lead box.
The coins were unearthed on the site of the bustling Roman town of Cunetio, hence the name of the hoard. It was later valued at $176,000, which is around $811,000 (£652k) in today's money.
The Crown was awarded two-thirds of the value, with Humphries and Booth granted the remaining third. The coins have since ended up in the British Museum, while the jar is on display at the Wiltshire Museum.
Unlike Germany, digging up antiquities is legal in the UK, if you have the permission of the landowner and report all gold and silver finds of over 300 years old or any prehistoric bronze hoards within 14 days.
But metal detectorists Arthur and Greta Brooks failed to get the all-clear from the landowner before they discovered an exquisite collection of Roman jewellery, spoons, and other metalwork in a field near Thetford in Norfolk, England in November 1979. The couple concealed the find for months. By the time they fessed up, the site had been built over, preventing further excavation...
The fourth-century hoard was claimed by the British Museum and in 1981 it was valued at $325,000, which is $1.5 million (£1.2m) in 2023 money. In the meantime, Arthur Brooks had died from cancer. Controversially, his widow, rather than being punished for the illegal dig and hiding the opulent objects, was awarded a third of the value.
In 2014, an unnamed treasure hunter got into hot water when he illegally excavated a site that had his metal detector beeping near Rülzheim in western Germany – it's strictly against the law in the country to dig up a find without alerting the authorities.
The fortune seeker had come across a cache of precious Roman objects from the end of the empire including gold brooches and a remarkable folding silver chair that had either been hidden by a marauding Barbarian or fleeing Roman official.
The metal detectorist had tried to sell on some of the pieces before authorities found out about the discovery and it's likely part of the hoard is missing to this day.
When the find was first announced, there was even speculation it might have formed part of the fabled Norse Nibelung Treasure, the inspiration behind Wagner's operas. While this isn't the case, the hoard is super-valuable nonetheless, having been pegged at $1.3 million in 2014, the equivalent of $1.7 million (£1.4m) today.
This beguiling treasure was unearthed on a snowy January day back in 1942 by farmer Gordon Butcher as he was ploughing a field in Mildenhall in Suffolk, England.
Butcher's boss, Sydney Ford, helped him excavate the find, which turned out to be absolutely breathtaking: 34 masterpieces of Roman silverware from the fourth century AD, the most notable being the glorious Great Dish depicting a sea god at its centre.
Like the Brooks, Butcher and Ford delayed informing the authorities about the find, leading to all sorts of speculation, including allegations additional objects had been discovered and sold on.
The treasure was ultimately claimed by the Crown in 1946 and valued at $62,000 (£50k), a staggering $2.1 million (£1.7m) in today's money. The finders were given a reward of £2,000: around $84,000 (£68k) when adjusted for inflation. If they'd reported the discovery sooner, the payment would have been considerably larger.
An unemployed amateur metal detectorist in his 20s saw his luck turn around spectacularly in May 2010 when he happened upon this handsome Roman bronze cavalry parade helmet in a field near Crosby Garret in Cumbria. Amazingly, the treasure seeker had been searching the same field for seven years together with his father – persistence definitely does pay off!
The first century AD object isn't considered treasure under UK law, so the Crown couldn't claim the find and it didn't even have to be reported.
The stunning helmet ended up selling at Christie's London in October 2010 for $2.9 million, eight times over its estimate, and a huge $4.1 million (£3.3m) in today's money. The proceeds were divided between the metal detectorist and the landowner. Sadly, a museum hoping to acquire the helmet was outbid by an anonymous buyer.
After losing a hammer in one of his fields near the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, farmer Peter Watling roped in his friend Eric Lawes on 16 November 1992 to find it using a metal detector he'd received as a retirement gift.
The hammer was nowhere to be found that day, but what Lawes did discover blew the original purpose of the search out of the water. He's pictured here with his wife marvelling at a small part of the find.
Lawes had detected the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in the UK. Composed of 569 gold coins, 14,272 silver coins, 24 bronze coins, 29 gold jewellery pieces, 98 silver spoons, and other precious items, the Hoxne Hoard was valued in 1993 at £1.75 million, which is equivalent to $4.4 million (£3.5m) in 2023.
The full amount was granted to Lawes, who did the honourable thing and split it with Watling, and the collection now resides in the British Museum, which has put the most important pieces on permanent display.
When it comes to fame, rarity, and value, no other Roman coin even comes close to the Gold Ides of March denarius, aka the "Eid Mar". Issued in 42 BC by Brutus, one of the plotters behind Julius Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March (the 74th day of the Roman calendar) in 44 BC, the coin shamelessly celebrates the Roman dictator's death.
Only three of the coins have been found, including a specimen that's thought to have been unearthed in Greece around 2013. It went under the hammer in New York in 2020 for $4.2 million, making it the most valuable Roman coin ever sold. In today's money, that's $4.9 million (£3.9m).
Shockingly, the denarius was later found to have been looted and the sale was deemed fraudulent. Richard Beale, the auctioneer who arranged the transaction, was arrested in the Big Apple and faces up to 25 years in prison, while the billionaire buyer was forced to hand over the coin, which was returned to Greece in March.
Founded by the Romans in 16 BC, Trier in western Germany is home to the world's best-preserved Roman city gate and multiple other sites from the classical period, when it was a major population centre. It's not surprising then that the largest-ever hoard of Roman gold was unearthed in the city. The trove of 2,518 coins weighing almost 41 pounds was uncovered on 9 September 1993 during construction works.
The coins, which are thought to equate to the annual pay of 130 Roman soldiers, date from between 63 and 196 AD, and were likely hidden due to the civil war that kicked off in the latter year.
The collection ended up in the Rhineland State Museum. In 2019, a group of thieves attempted to steal it but botched the raid and fled empty-handed. That same year, the value of the hoard was reported at $11.9 million, which is $13.3 million (£10.7m) today.
Lauded as one of the most beautiful works of art surviving from the classical period, Artemis and the Stag was unearthed by construction workers in Rome in the 1920s.
In 2007, the esteemed bronze sculpture of the Greek goddess of the hunt and her sacred deer was put up for auction via Sotheby's New York by the then-owner, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which was on a drive to generate funds to acquire modern and contemporary artworks.
The gallery expected the ancient statue to fetch between $5 million and $7 million, but it went for a humongous $28.6 million, smashing the record at the time for a piece of sculpture sold at auction.
The sublime statue, which based on inflation is now worth $42 million (£33.9m), was bought by an anonymous European buyer but is currently on a long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The most valuable hoard of Roman coins ever discovered was found in 1714 by a peasant who was ploughing a field in the town of Brescello near Modena in northern Italy. Consisting of about 80,000 pure gold aurei coins deposited around 38 BC, the haul is thought to have been the treasure chest of a powerful warlord. It contained enough coinage to cover the annual salaries of 8,000 legionaries.
Weighing more than 1,400 pounds, the coin hoard is in fact the largest ever unearthed according to Guinness World Records. A very conservative estimate from 2019 valued the haul at $80 million in its entirety, but it could have been worth upwards of $240 million (£193m) in today's money, had it survived intact – the Brescello Hoard was melted down to mint ducati coins, aside from a few choice specimens that were sold to collectors.
What could very well be the most valuable Roman treasure ever discovered, the Lava Treasure first came to light when some coins were found in the 1950s on the shallow sea floor in the Gulf of Lava off the coast of Corsica. Then, in 1986, three local fishermen diving for sea urchins made the most important discovery when they found hundreds of gold coins and other valuables dating from the third century AD.
Under French law, all underwater archaeological finds belong to the state, so instead of reporting the discovery the fishermen kept quiet and sold the items illegally. The three finders were eventually prosecuted and handed suspended sentences, but while some of the 1,400 coins and other items including a gold dish have been recovered, most of the pieces remain missing and the most valuable object, an exceptional gold statue of a youth, was likely melted down.
In terms of value, estimates put the intact haul at between several tens of millions to many hundreds of millions of euros. That's an incredible sum of more than $500 million ($402m) today.
Now discover the amazingly valuable treasures that were bought for very little money