7th century Saxon gold sword pommel found in a fieldNoonans Mayfair auction house / SWNS
Posted on 06/08/2025 10:35:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A stunning gold Saxon sword pommel that was unearthed in a field in Leicestershire, England by an 81-year-old woman has sold at auction for $22,000 (Ā£16k).
The rare 7th-century artifact was found in 2021 while the long-time metal detector enthusiast was searching a field during a local gathering of detectives.
They told her that there was nothing to be found in the field where she was searching, but she persevered and found the gold pommel seven inches beneath the ground...
Weighing 20.5 grams, the pommel -- which the Leicester Museum declined to purchase -- would have been fixed to the end of the sword handle both as a counterbalance and to stop the hand from slipping.
The woman who found the pommel, who wished to remain anonymous, has been metal detecting for 60 years. When she started detecting back in the 1960s people asked her what she was doing, and she always told them she was "looking for bombs". Since then, she has found many Medieval and Roman coins, but the pommel discovery has been one of the most exciting...
She will use her half of the sale price to buy a new car, while the other half will be given to the landowner.
The auction experts said the artifact compares with the detectorist-found Staffordshire hoard of gold jewelry, while the motif of the confronting beasts can also be seen on a shield from the Sutton Hoo ship burial.
(Excerpt) Read more at goodnewsnetwork.org ...
7th century Saxon gold sword pommel found in a fieldNoonans Mayfair auction house / SWNS
By any chance does the old bint live in a pond?
LOL!
Oh course they would say it was empty.
Very cool design. Almost looks like a Snake head in the center with 2 serpentine bodies coming out of it.
I am surprised that the greedy royal family didn’t steal it from Her.
Check it out PING !!!
stealth gold. alien technology.
Really beautiful. I have mixed feelings about graverobbing, but just joy at unearthed treasures being rediscovered. Applause to the woman who never gave up.
.
A farcical aquatic ceremony!
Right! Someone would sneak back at night and dig it up themselves.
Those cheap Chinese metal detectors ain’t worth a sh!t!................
Detectorists +1!
So they let it go into a private collection?
Maybe it doesn't fit their narrative that Africans colonized England.
20 g of AU is about 1 cm^3, and in any case still just 20 g. That’s not much of a pommel for a sword. Perhaps a dagger at most - or, more likely, something else entirely.
Seriously - someone thought that a 20 g weight would make a viable sword pommel?
Presumably it was just the outer layer. As one of the goldbugs around here once said, gold foil can be about 1/1000th of an inch thin.
It’s no basis for a system of government!
:)
It really is a very cool find! Glad they returned it to the lady too.
Same here.
That is true: Gold is the most malleable of metals.
1 g of gold can be drawn into a wire of ~1.75 miles length!
Didn’t see any mention of it being an outer layer only, though, and how then would they determine the weight with any certainty?
Anyway.... nice find. š
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