A 65-year-old retired scientist joined a group of amateur treasure hunters looking over a farmer’s field in Norfolk, England. Andy Carter, with his metal detector, dug about ten inches into the mud when his device pinged. It turns out that he picked up a small gold coin. “When I brushed off the soil, I saw the hind leg of a big cat,” Carter told the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood. “I thought, ‘It can’t be a leopard.’”
The coin with the feline engraving was actually a leopard florin, a currency that was minted as part of a failed currency experiment by Edward III, who ruled England from 1327 to 1377 C.E. It was sold at an auction for a whopping £140,000 (around $185,000).
Image credit: Dix Noonan Webb