17.2. 2016 Coins from the Thirty Years' War

The beautiful find was made by amateur archaeologist Martin Skříček in the autumn of 2015, and the media reported on it in February of the following year. NHe used a metal detector to discover thirty coins from the Thirty Years' War on the edge of the woods of Woodhostice.

For the thirty-year-old finder, this was one of the most valuable discoveries, as he had previously found, for example, a sabre from the Napoleonic Wars. Apparently, one of the soldiers lost it, because in the 19th century, the wooden chateau served as a military infirmary.

After finding the coins, Skříček said he was very lucky indeed. "The coins were scattered in a radius of about three metres," said Skříček, who cooperates with the Přerov Museum and is involved in the Preventive Archaeology of the Olomouc Region project. He was not interested in the possible reward for the find.

The coins were located about 20 centimetres underground at the edge of the Woodhostice forest. The depot was later added to the collection of the Přerov Museum. The hoard contains 19 twelve-krejcars of Moravian estates. They were minted in Brno and Olomouc in 1619 and 1620.

Skříček found the treasure with a metal detector. Among the most interesting coins from the depot, the experts named the Arendschilling of the Dutch town of Campen with the title of Rudolf II or the twenty-fourth knight of Frederick the Great minted in 1620 in Kutná Hora.

Lubor Maloň, the curator of the numismatic collections of the Comenius Museum, confirmed that the largest part of the depot is indeed made up of nineteen silver twelve-crescent Moravian coins minted in 1620. He also pointed out that the coins date from a time when more and more copper was added to silver coins during minting. The collection may have belonged to a soldier in receipt of mercenary pay or to a local craftsman.

Treasure from Přerov

Until then, the only known hoard of coins from the same period was from Přerov. At the beginning of August 1923, during the demolition of a house, Josef Bláha, a construction assistant, found the largest hoard of gold and silver coins. Thanks to the staff of the local museum, it was possible to preserve this depot containing 2390 coins in their entirety, which were minted in the 16th and 17th centuries. Later, the treasure was transferred to the museum collection.

The hoard contains government and secular feudal coins (1 855 pieces), ecclesiastical coins (238 pieces) and municipal coins (297 pieces). "Compositionally, according to the type and value of the metal, there are 26 pieces of gold coinage, 115 pieces of thalers and their parts, 156 pieces of long "The experts from the Komenský Museum in Přerov write.

For experts, this treasure is interesting because of the variety of coins. The most represented countries are Germany (1 583 pieces) and Switzerland (405 pieces), followed by the Czech Republic (224 pieces), Austria, Poland and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. In addition, Hungary, Transylvania and the Ottoman Empire are minimally represented.

Sources: www.muni.cz, https://prerovmuzeum.cz/, www.denik.cz, www.idnes.cz