Key Points
- In 2024, a woman discovered a 900-year-old stash of over 2,150 medieval silver coins during a walk.
- Experts hailed the find as one of the decade’s most significant, linking the coins to historical political turmoil.
- The coins, possibly linked to the Přemysl dynasty, may reveal more about medieval wealth and life in Prague.
A ceramic pot turned into a jackpot for a woman on a walk in the Kutnohorsk Region of the Czech Republic. While out on a stroll in 2024, the woman happened upon a roughly 900-year-old stash of more than 2,150 medieval silver coins known as denarii.
While the ceramic pot holding the coins was mostly demolished, the coins themselves survived in a dense cluster. According to a translated statement, the find was handled by experts from the institute and the Czech Museum of Silver in Kutná Hora.
The institute described the hoard as one of the most significant finds of the previous decade, and archaeologist Filip Velímský said the discovery was like winning a prize in the lottery—even if someone else was the loser.
“It was probably placed in its place during the first quarter of the 12th century, at a time of internal political instability,” Velímský said in a 2024 statement. “At that time, there were disputes in the country between the members of the Přemysl dynasty about the princely throne of Prague.”
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Stashing coins in a ceramic container was meant to be a way of keeping them safe. And the container certainly did its job, even if the owner was never able to return for them—the coins weren’t recovered for another 900 years.
According to the experts, that owner almost certainly had access to wealth far beyond an ordinary household. “Unfortunately, for the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, we lack data on the purchasing power of the contemporary coin,” Velímský said. “But it was a huge amount, unimaginable for an ordinary person and at the same time unaffordable. It can be compared to winning a million in the jackpot.”
The Kutnohorsk Region was known for frequent battles for the Prague princely throne, with the armies of individual rival princes repeatedly marching through the area, according to the institute. It’s tempting to read a collection of coins found in such a place as pay wages for soldiers, or some sort of “war booty”—but these are just educated guesses.
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Early analysis of the haul connected the coins to three different Přemysl leaders (likely between 1085 and 1107): King Vratislav II and princes Břetislav II and Bořivoje II. But it’s safer to assume from the official statement that the denarii were most likely minted in Prague, according to Lenka Mazačová, director of the Czech Silver Museum in Kutná Hora.
The coins are made from an silver alloy that included copper, lead, and trace amounts of other metals. Experts hoped to figure out the exact composition of the coins to help determine the origin of the silver, but there hasn’t been any public follow-up report since the original finding.
The biggest remaining question: What else can the coins still reveal? In 2024, Mazačová said that museum staff would register, clean, and conserve all the pieces of the collection, and that the hoard could be displayed as early as summer 2025. However, there still isn’t a dedicated denarii-hoard exhibition in the Czech Museum of Silver’s current public exhibition listings.
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Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
