Golden moon of the Cheka (when a small find sells well)
Sometimes locals come up to me on the mine, look at what I’m doing, and then ask: how much gold have I found here already? If only these people knew how stupid their question sounds. After all, finding gold for a digger is a great success. Of course, those who dig on beaches have a greater chance of finding something made of yellow metal, but people like me, who dig mostly antiquities, rarely see gold.
But still, when you were lucky, and in the dump the find showed its yellow side, then for sure it would cost several times more, similar in weight from the beach. The digger who sold his collectible gold find – the lunnitsa of the Chernyakhov Culture – will agree with this statement of mine.
These items are part of women’s clothing, personifying the lunar cult, fertility and femininity. Lunars were mostly made of bronze and silver, but much less often of gold.
The digger didn’t think for a long time about the cost of the rare luna – he decided that the real price would be determined by an auction and offered his find for the minimum amount. Result: 175 bets and a beautiful golden lunar Chka weighing 2.73 grams brought the digger $650.
It’s nice when the finds are culturally and financially interesting. Gold, in itself as a metal, is not worth that much, but gold with history costs tens and hundreds of times more than just gold by weight. But such finds are not the most frequent. We collect all the stories about interesting finds here.