Stroke of luck: he found a priceless 2,000-year-old Roman gold ring buried in his garden

Mike Burke is a renowned GCSE Functional Skills Professor of Mathematics at Penwith College in the United Kingdom. During his youth he spent 20 years in the United States military police and held various positions as a guard in military prisons. Already retired and with the position of teacher, he began to use his free time to watch the program The Detectorists. Fanaticized by what he saw, he wanted to take his new passion a little further.

Like the protagonists of the series, Burke wanted to become a treasure hunter, and it was just a matter of obtaining the necessary elements to start developing a new hobby. his wife Julie gave him the push he needed and bought him a Garrett Ace Apex for Christmas, a high-tech metal detector, that allowed him discover an impressive treasure.

“I still have chills”, Burke confessed to the site ITV. For several months he toured different areas of Cornwall but without success. Just a few metals of little value and low historical content became his “trophies”. However, an afternoon of boredom led him to try the famous metal detector in your own garden.

In his house there is a rule that, moreover, made sense beyond the request. His wife is an inveterate gardener and has a wide variety of flowers planted in the back of their house. He he couldn’t use his metal detector there; something that did not attract his attention either since the constant movement of the earth made it unlikely that he would find anything. Nevertheless, the flowers had withered and the time was approaching to replant them and bring new ones. “Since we were preparing to take everything out, I thought there would be no problem if it went in there. Next month, when I start planting seeds again, I won’t be able to do it so it’s now or never,” he explained.

A treasure in the yard

This is how it started and from the earth began to unearth hidden treasures. The first finds were somewhat disappointing and with muddy hands he pushed aside some old coins and some scrap metal until his metal detector gave him the signal he needed. Lights, noise, and a huge “81” on the reader gave him the lead to dig. “About 25 centimeters down I noticed a small gold stain or something that looked a lot like it. I didn’t know if it was an old bottle cap but when I pulled it out it was a gold ring”, he counted surprised.

At first he did not know what it was but after posting his find on Facebook he was alerted that it was a great treasure. As the regulations say, you have to report your discovery to the local Findings Liaison Officer so that they can carry out the corresponding investigation. In the middle, they contacted several experts in the field who gave them a partial opinion, in the absence of official expert reports.

This is a gravure ring made of gold It weighs about 12.8 grams and features the image of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture carved from a chalcedony gemstone. Apparently dates back 2000 years and would prove the presence of the Roman Empire in the Cornwall area.

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