British Tudor portcullis coin, 1500s (Lot 5)

About This Coin

A copper coin recovered from the round stone feature on Lot 5 during the Season 11 premiere, the fourth coin the team pulled from the same feature in a single day. The morning had already produced three coins. Rick Lagina, Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, and Gary Drayton returned to the lot in the afternoon, and Drayton's detector hit again. Rick recovered the coin from beneath a small pile of soil. The team read what looked like a faint number on one face, with the other showing what they described as a squiggly design.

Later in the same episode, numismatist Sandy Campbell examined the coin at the Interpretive Centre. "This design goes back to the 1500s, 16th century," he told the team. Asked which culture, Campbell answered: "British. This is Tudor period. It is very obvious that that is a portcullis on there. And it is used even today on modern British coins." The portcullis, a heavy iron gate used between the 5th and 15th centuries to protect castles and fortifications, was incorporated into English coinage from the late 15th century onward as a symbol of strength.

The Tudor identification placed English activity on Oak Island in the 1500s, before the documented British colonial period in Nova Scotia and within the window proposed by some researchers for Sir William Phips and the silver of the Concepcion wreck.

Three further coins came out of Lot 5 the same day. From the morning search, a Roman coin Campbell dated to between 100 and 300 AD, an older copper-silver Roman piece Campbell dated to before 100 AD, and a brass piece bearing a woven pattern, given competing identifications by Emma Culligan as a 13th-century French denier and by Sandy Campbell as possibly 6th to 8th-century Indian.