PREVIEW

A pair of hikers made a remarkable discovery after stumbling upon a stash of gold worth more than £250,000 while exploring mountains in the Czech Republic.

The massive hoard - weighing more than 15 pounds - has now been handed over to the Museum of Eastern Bohemia in Hradec Králové.

The find was made in February when the two walkers were trekking through the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains in the country’s northeast.

While passing an overgrown field, they spotted a tin aluminium box partly hidden at the edge of the land.

Inside, they found around 600 gold coins carefully arranged in 11 stacks and wrapped in a thin black fabric.

Nearby, the hikers also uncovered a second container – an iron box packed with other valuables.

Among the items were 16 cigarette cases, 10 bracelets, a comb, a chain and a compact case.

All the objects are made from a yellow metal that experts say has yet to be formally analysed.

The entire haul was quickly turned over to archaeologists at the museum, who have been studying the trove ever since.

Experts say the coins originate from a wide range of places, including France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Romania, the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

Curiously, none of the coins come from Germany or Czechoslovakia.

Most of the pieces are French and the collection appears to date broadly between 1808 and 1915.

However, several Austro-Hungarian coins bear small countermarks showing they were reissued in 1921 in what was then part of Yugoslavia – likely covering areas of modern-day Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The treasure was hidden in the ground for over a hundred years,” the museum’s coin expert Vojtěch Brádle said in a statement.

“What is certain is that in 1921, at least part of these coins couldn’t have been on our territory. They must have still been in the Balkans at that time.”

Researchers say there are several possible reasons someone might have hidden such valuables in Czechoslovakia during the turbulent early 20th century.

The stash could have been buried during the lead-up to the World War II in 1938, amid wartime deportations of Jewish and Czech citizens, or during the expulsion of Germans after the conflict ended.

Another theory, according to the museum’s head of archaeology Miroslav Novák, is that the treasure was hidden during the monetary reform imposed by the Soviet Union in 1953.

“Storing valuable objects in the ground has been a common practice since prehistoric times,” Novák said in a statement.

“It was clearly not about the nominal value of the coins or about what the coins could buy. Rather, it was deliberately hidden because it was a precious metal.”

The hoard remains under investigation as archaeologists comb through historical records in hopes of uncovering the full story behind the hidden fortune.

The museum says it eventually plans to put the remarkable discovery on public display.