The Richard III Half-Angel: found at dusk after a bad day at work, and kept in Buckingham by its finder's wish

On 10 September 2019, after what he later called a particularly fraught day at work, Dave Bethell went out detecting at dusk in a field within a mile of the centre of Buckingham. He got a strong signal, dug, and found nothing. Scraping at the sides of the hole, he saw a small gold coin fall out of the soil. It is a half-angel, the smaller sister of the gold angel, struck at the London mint for Richard III, who reigned from June 1483 until he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485. On the front St Michael spears a dragon. On the back is a ship, with an R for Richard on one side of the mast and a Yorkist rose on the other. Both sides carry Richard's personal mark, a boar's head. The coin has a slight fold, a small worn break and an irregular edge, but it is crisp, and according to the Art Fund only seven Richard III half-angels are known. Richard III's coins are rare because his reign was so short: just over two years, between taking the throne from his nephew Edward V, one of the Princes in the Tower, and his death at Bosworth. His body was found under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015, which brought a new wave of interest in anything connected with him. As a single gold coin, it was recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme and could have been sold at auction, probably to a collector abroad. Dave Bethell wanted it to stay in Buckingham. With the help of a grant from the Art Fund, the Buckingham Old Gaol Museum bought it for about £40,000 in 2020, its first medieval gold coin, and it went on display there in 2021 alongside coins from the Lenborough Hoard, also found near Buckingham. Written for Global Finds from the Art Fund, Detecting Finds (2021) and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Photo: the Richard III half-angel found near Buckingham, Arwen Wood, Portable Antiquities Scheme, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.