3/23/2017 461 coins from the Thirty Years' War

Five years ago, archaeologists were summoned to a field in Plchůvky near Chocň by a woman who saw pieces of pottery and coins there. In the end, it turned out to be a ploughed treasure. It read 461 silver coins, mostly Prague grosz. The woman received a reward of 10,200 crowns.

There were about 200 Prague groszy in the treasure. The depot also included a thaler of Rudolf II or a representative of minted Saxon thalers. "There are also representatives of other different mints, but they are still waiting to be cleaned, so I can't say too much about them.We can't say too much," said David Vích, an archaeologist at the Regional Museum in Vysoké Mýto.

The treasure remained intact because the honest finder immediately called archaeologists to the site. "The find is already about a year old, but the coins are currently undergoing determination of their exact age and type. When the conservation of the coins is finished, we will present the entire find to the public," said Jiří Junek, the museum's director, five years ago.

The cultural-historical value of the treasure from 1471 to 1616 was determined by an expert at 892,000. The finder received a reward of CZK 10,200 from the Pardubice Region.

"The price of the finding fee was set at the maximum amount according to the silver and gold content of the coins," said Roman Línek, deputy governor of the Pardubice Region.

A comparatively large treasure was last discovered in the vicinity of Vysoké Mýto in the 1960s.

"They were such typical coins. They were not used in normal trade and were not very common. They contained about 30 grams of pure silver, these are the high denominations, the thalers. In today's values, it would be thousands or tens of thousands," Vích explained.

The county treated the finders according to the law. The finder's fee is calculated on the basis of the precious metal content of the found deposit. Their value in the case of the Plchůvek hoard was one hundred thousand crowns, so the ten percent finders' fee is ten thousand crowns.

Some regions increase the rewards to motivate the finders. For example, three years ago, the Vysočina Region increased the reward for the finder of the historical treasure from Ujčovo in the Žďár Region. A forester there found a jug with 284 coins and handed it over to the Museum of the Highlands in Jihlava.

Sources: www.idnes.cz, www.rozhlas.cz