Silver coin hoard found in the outskirts of Moscow may have been buried by a medieval plague victim

The coins are of the pre-1916 denga denomination, and were found hidden within a small, ceramic jug decorated with engobe buried in a shallow pit near the city’s trading district.

A hoard of over 2,600 silver coins were found during rescue excavations in Kolomna, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology announced in a statement late last week, marking it the the largest hoard of silver coins minted in the second and third decades of the 15th century ever found.

The coins are of the pre-1916 denga denomination, and were found hidden within a small, ceramic jug decorated with engobe buried in a shallow pit near the city’s trading district. The plural form of denga, "dengi," has become the modern Russian word meaning "money."

Many of the coins are dengi of the Grand Princes Vasily I Dmitriyevich (1389-1425) and  Vasily II Vasilyevich “the Blind” (1425-1462), while there is a near-complete absence of coins minted by appanage princes.

The large sum has led archaeologists to conclude that its owner had been wealthy, likely belonging to the upper class at the time.

As the latest coins in the hoard date to the second half of the 1420s, researchers theorize that the owner may have fallen victim to one of the epidemics that swept through Russia between 1425-1427.

Notably, a significant number of the coins from Dmitriyevich’s reign were minted in Kolomna itself and bear the likeness of a flying bird, a rarity in such coins found in other regions of Russia.

Within the hoard, researchers discovered over 350 previously unknown varieties of Kolomna coins, as well as other types of coins absent from collections displayed at many of Russia’s museums.

The hoard also allows for the identification of the final Kolomna coins issued with the bird’s likeness, dating to the end of Dmitriyevich’s reign.

Hoard of century old gold coins discovered under a house in western Russia

In March, the Russian Academy of Sciences announced that it had discovered a hoard of 409 gold ruble coins dated to over a century ago underneath a home in Torzhok.

Discovered during a joint expedition between the Institute and the All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum in 2025, the hoard is one of the largest hoards of late Imperial Russian gold coins ever to be recovered.

Part of the property under excavation contained the foundations of a house believed to have been destroyed during World War II. After the war, the home’s new owners rebuilt the wooden house on the surviving stone foundations.

Found hidden within a broken kandyushka (glazed clay vessel) in a pit under the house’s foundation, the hoard consisted of 387 gold 10-ruble coins, 10 five ruble coins, 10 coins worth 15 rubles, and two seven-and-a-half ruble coins were found.

Together, the coins add up to about 4,070 rubles, according to the Institute’s statement. Based on the melt value of one pre-revolution 10 ruble coin, which is about 90% gold, the entire hoard may be valued at an estimated half a million dollars.