An amateur history buff has found what may be Canada’s oldest gold coin in Newfoundland. The piece, minted in England about 600 years ago, predates the first European contact with North America since Viking times.

According to The Canadian Press, the coin found last summer by this hobbyist, named Edward Hynes, it would be around six centuries old, which would make it the oldest in Canada.

Hynes found the artifact at an undisclosed archaeological site somewhere on the south coast of Newfoundland. The exact location is kept secret so as not to attract treasure hunters.

As provincial archaeologist Jamie Brake noted, Hynes immediately contacted his local heritage society when he first saw the coin. “He did exactly what we would expect someone to do in circumstances like this,” Brake said.

After consulting with a former curator at the Bank of Canada’s Mint Museum, it has been determined that the gold coin is a noble quarter of Henry VI. With a face value of one shilling eightpence, the coin was minted in London between 1422 and 1427, i.e. some 70 years before John Cabot landed on the shores of Newfoundland in 1497 after setting sail from the English port of Bristol. .

But the coin’s age doesn’t mean that anyone from Europe was on the island before Cabot, according to Brake. The piece could have been part of a later settler’s collection. It is unlikely to have been in circulation when it was lost, as it had a very high value in the 1400s.

The coin is older than the half grain of silver (worth twopence) found in Cupids, Newfoundland and Labrador, the oldest English colony in Canada, estimated to have been minted in Canterbury, England between 1493 and the 1499.

This latest discovery trumps that discovery. Brake described it as a thin circle of solid gold, slightly smaller than a quarter and weighing just over a dime. To find out how it got to the south coast of Newfoundland, Brake and his team will mark the spot where it was found as a site of interest and devise a plan to explore it. “We are very interested in learning more,” he said.