The find of an English coin of Elizabeth I in British Columbia is interesting, but without any proper archaeological documentation it means nothing. Over the years I have carried a variety of pocket pieces, dating back as far as a Roman denarius, but when I lost them, as I inevitably have save for the 1950 Railroad five pesos I am currently carrying, it was never in the year the coin was made or even the years that it was still current.

I doubt that the coin was placed there contemporaneously. The earliest European explorer to the area was Juan de Fuca; the British didn't get there until years later under James Cook and George Vancouver in the late 18th century. As far as the Vikings are concerned, they were busy on the coast of Labrador but didn't appear to venture farther south or west, certainly not on the Pacific coast.

As for the most bizarre and farflung findspot recorded for a British 17th cent token, Robert Thompson some years ago drew my attention to "a Reuters report entitled "Disc dated 1657 found inside shark", viz. the stomach of a five-foot shark caught off Galveston, Texas, in 1931, reported in the Morning Post of 9 September 1931, p.13, col.1, and followed by a letter on 12 September from A. J. Wood of Canterbury. The upshot was that the disc was identified as a specimen of Williamson's Kent 452, Richard Langley of Ramsgate."