I dug up a medieval silver coin in my garden - and it taught me a surprising lesson about the value of money

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There's something about stumbling upon hidden treasure that has an ageless appeal, from Robert Louis Stephenson's classic 1883 novel Treasure Island to TV show The Detectorists.

And recently I found some buried treasure of my own, in the form of an old silver coin.

The most valuable thing about it turned out to be its history, rather than it being worth huge amounts of money.

But I think the story of this one little coin teaches us modern-day lessons about the value of money, and how the way we make and spend coins has barely changed in 650 years.

It even tells us something about the ever-present nature of fraud.

The coin had lain hidden for hundreds of years in a flower bed... until I dug it up by accident

Recently I was digging up some weeds in my garden that were threatening to overrun my vegetable patch, when I saw something glinting in some overturned earth.

Thinking it was an old bottle cap, I went to pick it up - only to find it was a silver coin. Brushing the soil away, I was intrigued to find that the coin looked old, and was covered in Latin writing as well as the image of a king that I did not recognise.

Taking my find inside, I decided to learn as much as I could about the coin - with my immediate thought being that it could be valuable, and that I might even find more buried in the earth.

So I spoke to some coin experts to find out more about the history of this mysterious coin with, I think, some fascinating results.

A numismatic expert at Hattons of London - the technical term for someone who studies money and coins - informed me that the coin is a silver groat, made in the reign of King Edward III between 1356 and 1361 and made of 92.5 per cent pure silver.

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My daydreams of selling the coin and taking early retirement were about to be squashed, however, as Hattons then valued it at around £100 to £150, while auctioneers Warwick & Warwick valued it at £50 to £80.

Barely enough to call yourself rich by the standards of 1361, let alone 2024.

The groat was worth 4p back in the 14th century, which was about two day's wages for a basic labourer, or one day's wage for a skilled worker such as a carpenter.

The coin would have bought two chickens, 16 pints of beer, 2lb of cheese or two dozen eggs in medieval times.

Sadly my Latin is a bit rusty, and I could not decipher the fragmented text printed onto the coin - bar the word 'London' and 'Edward'.

Fortunately, Hattons could.

Even covered in dirt, it was clear that this silver coin was worth further investigation

The 'heads' side of the coin reads 'Edward DG Rex ANGL & Franc D Hyb' - or 'Edward, by the Grace of God, king of England and France, Lord of Ireland’.

On the opposite side, the Latin 'Posui Deum A Diutor Em Meu' translates as 'I have made God my helper', and the text 'Civi Tas London' means, as you can probably guess, that the coin was minted in London - in the Tower of London, to be precise.

In a way, very little has changed when it comes to the monarch's impact on our money today.

Not only do coins still feature the likeness of the ruling king or queen, but many still bear text implying they have a divine right to rule, despite our increasingly secular culture.

For example, take the inscription found on today's £1 coins - 'Charles III Dei Gra Rex Fid Def', or 'King Charles III, reigning by the grace of God, defender of the faith'.

The coin itself also features an interesting early anti-fraud feature.

The large cross is meant to make it easier to spot if silver has been removed from the coin

The 'tails' side of the coin has a large cross, which goes from edge to edge. The point of this cross is to make it obvious if someone had removed metal from the edge, known as 'clipping'.

If a criminal clipped enough coins, they could essentially make free money by melting the silver filings down and making new fake currency, or else make silver bullion to sell on.

So in 1247, mints began making coins with the so-called 'long cross' design, which would make clipped coins easier to spot.

This mattered in the middle ages, as the value of a coin was based on the value of the precious metal within it, and public trust in that notion underpinned the whole idea of coinage.

'This was an era when

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