Roman coins in a Welsh field, the story behind that hoard find last month

I read about that metal detectorist near Caerwent who pulled up 180 Roman coins, and what stuck with me is the sheer luck of it, he was about to pack up after a wet morning. The coins were mostly bronze, scattered by plowing, not in a pot or anything dramatic. It got me thinking about how much of archaeology is just timing and patience, a foot to the left and he never sees them. Has anyone here ever had a surface find that seemed random at first but turned out to be part of a bigger site?

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danielowens9d ago

The bit about "a foot to the left and he never sees them" hit home. I once spent a whole afternoon on a wet hillside in Shropshire looking for a lost dog, not coins. Found a rusted horseshoe, threw it back in the grass. Two years later, some uni students with a magnetometer mapped out a whole medieval blacksmith site maybe ten yards from where I chucked it. Still bugs me. Probably wasn't worth much, but it would've been a good story to point at and say I found the first piece. Now I'm the guy who mentions it at parties and everyone nods like I'm claiming a ghost story.