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V11 2008 INDEX
E-SYLUM ARCHIVE
GOLD COIN FOUND AT NEWFOUNDLAND COLONY SITE: LORD BALTIMORE'S POCKET CHANGE?
I only came across this recently, but an article published
last month in Canada describes a gold coin unearthed at a Newfoundland
archeological dig that cold have, theoretically at least, been the
property of colony founder Lord Baltimore. (It sounded familiar, but I was
unable to locate this topic in our E-Sylum archive). -Editor
Call it
the 17th-century equivalent of losing your bank card -- and then picture
the owner losing his mind trying to find it.Sometime around 1627 the owner of a gold coin lost it at an early British colony on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula.
Archeologist Jim Tuck, who dug the rarity out of the stone footing of a house last week at the Colony of Avalon, says how it got there is anybody's guess, but the erstwhile owner -- maybe the man who founded the colony in 1621, Lord Baltimore, himself -- didn't let it go very easily.
"It's probably the most unusual and valuable thing from this early period [ever found]. I don't know of any other [complete] gold coins from any other land archeological sites in eastern North America or Canada," said Tuck, who has been excavating the site of the colony since the early 1990s.
Tuck says when he first saw it, he didn't believe it.
"At first I thought it must be something that came out of the inside of a soft drink cap or something like that, you know, a piece of gold-coloured foil because you just don't expect anything like that," he said.
"[But] gold is such nice stuff -- it doesn't rust or corrode or anything. As soon as the dirt began to brush off you could see there was lettering around the rim and the crest and stuff. So it was pretty exciting for a few minutes there."
To read the complete article, see: Gold coin from 1627 unearthed at place of ex-British colony (http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?
id=46d18781-24aa-4430-b0f5-92bf5efd84e6)
Wayne Homren, Editor
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