‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’, the adage goes.
Although, if you’re David Hankin, 57, a sheep tag is just a sheep tag. Unless, of course, it’s actually a 3,500-year-old gold ribbon hidden in a crust of dirt.
Hankin very nearly binned the rare item, worn on clothes or hair in the distant past, because he thought it had fallen from a sheep’s ear near Cockermouth, Cumbria.
It may be only around 6cm long, but it’s a big find for the grounds maintenance operative, who only took up metal detecting three years ago.
He said: ‘When I dug it up, I was wearing a pair of gloves and didn’t feel the weight of it. It was bent round.
‘It looked very similar to a sheep’s ear tag. I looked to see if it had a number on. I chucked it into my scrap bag, taking my rubbish home with me.
‘It was covered in dirt. I couldn’t see it was gold. I then picked it up with no gloves and felt the weight of it. I thought, that’s gold. It got saved, which is the main thing.’
The 57-year-old had found it on land in one of the English regions most densely populated with prehistoric artefacts.
Farmers and metal detectors regularly churn up snippets of the Bronze Age in the form of pottery, axe heads and jewellery.
But as the name suggests, gold is something of a rarity in hauls of this era, spanning from roughly 2,000 BC to 800 BC in Britain.
This particular piece of Bronze Age gold was declared a treasure by coroner Robert Cohen during an inquest at Cockermouth Coroners Court last week.
It has now become property of the Crown as a result and will be sold to a museum, with its value determined by The Treasure Valuation Committee.
The Senhouse Museum in nearby Maryport has already expressed interest in the piece, estimated by The British Museum to be from between 1400 and 1500BC .
Senhouse usually specialises in the later Roman era, with an extensive collection of artefacts from the neighbouring ruins of Alauna fort.
A similar gold ribbon was valued at £1,000 after a 12-year-old found it in a field with his dad .
Like Mr Hankin, schoolboy Patrick Hooper nearly binned the find after mistaking it for foil, the Mirror reported in 2022.
Detectorists like Hankin and Hooper do stand a chance of bagging a reward, shared with the owner of the land where they found it, if it is indeed treasure.
But by law, they must first notify the local finds liaison officer, who will report the discovery to a coroner, who can determine its status as a treasure at an inquest.
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