On April 22, 1985, a remarkably large collection of coins was discovered at La Marcanderie, St. Brelade, on Jersey Island. At the time of its discovery, this hoard comprised more than 11,000 coins. Interestingly, these coins were not found within a container; instead, they were located beneath substantial rocks and were approximately 1 foot 8 inches below the ground's surface. Of these coins, 10,546 were subsequently presented to the Societe Gercinis. A preliminary illustrated report on these coins, authored by Major N. W. L. Rybot, was published in the Bulletin of the Jesuit Society in 1937.
The majority of the 10,546 coins found fall into the four categories most commonly encountered in Jersey.
These coins are believed to date back to around 50 B.C., a period when Julius Caesar's armies were advancing northwest through France, driving tribal communities toward the coast. Some of these tribespeople may have crossed the sea to Jersey, seeking refuge from Caesar's military campaigns. To safeguard their wealth, they would have buried it in a concealed location, where it remained hidden for over two millennia.
Determining the precise count of coins is impossible, but the mass retrieved from the burial site is estimated to range from 30,000 to 60,000 coins. If the upper estimate is accurate, this discovery could rank as the second-largest hoard ever unearthed, following Frome's hoard of 52,000 Roman coins. This three-quarter-ton collection represents the most extensive assortment of Celtic coins ever discovered on Jersey, an island renowned for its Iron Age coin hoards.
Archaeologists from the Société Jersiaise, Robert Waterhouse and Philip de Jersey, conducted meticulous excavation and documentation. They revealed that the coins had been placed at the bottom of a roughly dug pit, situated one meter below the contemporary ground level (although the surface of the Iron Age earth had eroded due to plowing). The hoard took the form of a solid, drop-shaped mass measuring 143 cm x 80 cm x 20 cm, and all the identified coins to date originated from Armorican regions (modern-day Brittany and Normandy), specifically the Coriosolite tribe, centered around the Rance valley near present-day Saint-Malo and Dinant. These coins appear to be composed of "billon," an alloy of copper and silver.