![]() Gameplay First Doomsday Hunters 10:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM GMT Narwhalnut Belle Boomerang 11:00 AM ET / 8:00 AM PT / 3:00 PM GMT Join our Discord chat Read the Wiki / FAQ Twitter Twitch YouTube Content Filters News We are a fan-run community, not an official Nintendo forum. r/NintendoSwitch is the central hub for all news, updates, rumors, and topics relating to the Nintendo Switch. ![]() The judge warned both men they faced jail sentences and remanded them in custody until a later date.Ask a question Submit memes/shitposts Hide Spoilers Daily Question Thread | Read our Wiki | Join our Discord | 2022 GotY Results | Send a ModMail Each man was found guilty of the possession charges by all jurors. On Thursday, the jury found both men guilty of the conspiracy charge by a majority of 10-2. Each man also denied separate charges of possessing criminal property. Pilling and Best had denied a charge of conspiring to sell criminal property. The crown accused neither Best nor Pilling, who are both keen metal detectorists, of being involved in the discovery of the coins.ĭuring the trial Best claimed Pilling told him that he bought the coins before the Treasure Act 1996 was brought into law. They suggest a need to reappraise the narrative of Alfred the Great, a ruler celebrated as the hero who almost single-handedly saved England from Viking rule. The coins tell a different story, showing how the two rulers stood shoulder to shoulder as allies. Specifically, the coins tell an untold story of the relationship between Alfred, king of Wessex, and Ceolwulf II, king of Mercia, in the late ninth century.Ĭeolwulf is barely mentioned in history books, with accounts suggesting he was little more than a puppet for the Vikings. It is astonishing that the history books need rewriting because of this find.”Īll 44 coins are now with the British Museum, which has had a chance to study them and concluded that they shine new light on our understanding of late ninth-century politics, Alfred the Great and the history of the formation of England. “It is not very often we get the chance to shape British history. “This is an extremely unusual case,” he said. In 2019 it launched Operation Fantail to investigate the case, an operation Det Supt Lee Gosling said was unprecedented for the force. Best was arrested and a subsequent raid of Pilling’s home recovered a further 41 coins.ĭurham constabulary was first alerted to the existence of the coins by the University of Cambridge. Those people were undercover police officers. Best took three of the coins to a hotel in Durham for a meeting with people he thought were representing a mystery American buyer. His attempt to sell the coins led to an undercover police operation being set up. I am looking at £200-250k for all of these that’s how good they are.” In an email he had said: “These coins are big money I will send you a sim card with them all on if you want. The court heard Best had also told Bude the coins were so good that he would need to fly over for them. The prosecution said that displeased Best, who sent an email which read: “They are a hoard as you know they are this can cause me problems all you had to do was say you didn’t want them and that was the end of it.” The court heard how Best contacted a US radiology professor at the University of Michigan, Ronald Bude, who was also a collector and lecturer on coins.īude’s first assessment of the coins was that they were fake and he said he was consulting an expert at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Pilling recruited Best, of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, to try to sell the coins. Pilling has never disclosed the full identity of the person he acquired them from. Only 29 of around 300 coins in the hoard had been recovered until the emergence of the 44, the subject of the two-week criminal trial in Durham.Ī jury heard that Pilling, from Rossendale, Lancashire, was in possession of the coins knowing they should have been declared. ![]() They were jailed for 10 and eight years respectively. Two metal detectorists who discovered the hoard, valued at about £12m, were found guilty of theft after failing to legally declare the findings. The coins were part of a Viking hoard discovered in a farm field in Leominster, Herefordshire, in 2015. Gareth Williams, the curator of early medieval coins at the British Museum, said: “The coins literally enable us to rewrite history.” ![]() The judge, James Adkin, told Durham crown court they had “immense historical significance”. The monetary value of the coins has been estimated at £766,000, but their historical value is more difficult to quantify. ![]() Photograph: Will Walker/North News & Pictures Craig Best (left) and Roger Pilling had denied the charges against them. ![]()
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