I’m Andy Bennetts, coin and medal collector and metal detectorist.

I’ve had a life long passion for coins. My late father used to do house clearances and from the age of around 7 I was recruited to sort through button tins and jewellery boxes checking items for hallmarks. During this “work” I stumbled on a cartwheel penny and was fascinated. I couldn’t really comprehend the age, 1797 seemed like an impossibly long time ago and the portrait of George III seemed cartoonish to me. I gradually accumulated a random collection of coins from various sources, family members, jumble sales and anywhere else I could.

When I was 12 I discovered metal detecting and have detected with varying degrees of consistency – life can often get in the way of hobbies – ever since. My favourite finds at first were bullets but in 1989 using a Tesoro Silver Sabre, I found my first hammered coin, an Elizabeth 1st sixpence and my interest in this series began. I grew up within a mile as the crow flies of the field where the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered and had permission for the field on the opposite side of the road for a time. So close yet so far. To date I haven’t found a Saxon coin but like most detectorists, I’m an eternal optimist. I have found Roman coins, my first, a very corroded bronze of Nero, sparked my interest in all things Roman.

My personal collection has taken many turns over the years with coins bought and sold as my interests have changed, owning a coin for a time and selling it to fund the purchase other coins or selling finds to fund the purchase of a new detector. I’ve sold coins on eBay since August 2000 and I still use it. Opinions vary but to my mind sites like eBay and the internet generally have changed coin collecting for the better.

Through more than 30 years of buying, selling and collecting coins there’s three that I will always keep. The cartwheel penny that amazed me as a child and my find firsts, the Nero bronze and the Elizabeth sixpence. I still own a Tesro Silver Sabre but sadly not the actual machine I found those coins with. For those interested, my current machine is an XP ORX.