A Lancashire treasure hunter who tried to flog Anglo-Saxon coins online has seen an appeal to reduce his prison sentence dismissed.

The Court of Appeal has thrown out the appeal by Roger Pilling, who was jailed for five years and two months alongside Craig Best in May 2023.

The pair conspired to sell 44 coins from the 9th Century, worth £766,000 and of “great historical and cultural value” to the UK, to who they believed was a buyer from the USA, but was actually an undercover police officer.

The coins, which were never declared as treasure, were believed to have been buried by a Viking and included two extremely rare examples of two-headed coins, showing Alfred of Wessex and Ceolwulf, a figure discredited by Saxon writers as a Viking puppet ruler.

Pilling, 76, from Loveclough, and Best, 48, from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, asked the Court of Appeal to reduce their sentences, with lawyers for Best telling judges the sentence was “manifestly excessive”.

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However, at the hearing on Wednesday, October 30, the three judges dismissed the appeals.

Mr Justice Murray stated the pairs’ plan was an “attempt to delete history” and that “it would have significantly diluted the nation’s shared history” had it succeeded.

Best was arrested with three coins at a hotel in Durham in May 2019, after meeting a detective posing as a metals expert employed by a broker for a wealthy American buyer.

Pilling was arrested at his home where a further 41 coins were seized.

The two men were later convicted of conspiracy to convert criminal property and a separate charge of possession of criminal property, with the trial in 2023 told that Pilling had acquired the collection on the “black market”.

The coins were estimated to have been made between 874 AD and 879 AD.

The sentencing judge found that the 44 coins were part of a larger, undeclared find known as the Herefordshire or Leominster Hoard, which was discovered in 2015 and is worth millions of pounds, but which was also not declared.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal heard that Pilling asked Best to help him sell the coins.

Chris Morrison, representing Best, said his client was “approached” by Pilling to sell the items and became the “de facto agent of the sale”.

He said: “I concede immediately that this is serious misconduct and it is clear this court regards it as such.

“But it is my submission that, when one perhaps considers the matter, the sentence in relation to my client may be too high.”

Pilling, who represented himself, made written submissions to the court but did not attend the hearing.

The court heard Pilling claimed “sufficient regard to his mitigation, namely his age, medical condition and being dependable on his wife” was not taken into account when he was sentenced.

Dismissing the appeal bids, Mr Justice Murray, sitting with Lord Justice William Davis and Judge Shaun Smith KC, said the pair “hatched a plan to sell the coins” on the “black market” to buyers in the US because “they knew the coins could not be safely sold in the UK to a legitimate dealer”.

The judge added the three coins Best and Pilling had planned to sell included “one coin that rewrites the history of King Alfred and the little-known King of Mercia”, and that trying to sell the coins abroad “meant history would likely be lost to the nation forever”.