Amateur metal detectorist uncovers incredibly rare 500-year-old royal pendant

Charlie Clarke had only owned his metal detector for six months when he discovered a piece of jewelry that has astonished the world.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime find for any metal detectorist.

Charlie Clarke, a café owner from Birmingham, England, was mourning the death of his dog in 2019 and decided he’d take his metal detector out for a spin in a friend’s nearby field to get some fresh air and raise his spirits.

He’d only been in possession of his metal detector for about six months, but the 34-year-old amateur made an astonishing find in the Warwickshire field.

“It was just outstanding,” Clarke told CNN. “Nobody thinks you’re ever going to pull out that, in my lifetime especially — I can imagine in 30 lifetimes.”

After turning up mostly “junk,” Clarke was about to call it quits when his detector started beeping loudly. He dug into the soil, about the depth of his elbow, and pulled out a large heart-shaped pendant attached to a gold chain.

The find, Clarke told The Guardian, made him scream “like a little schoolgirl, to be honest. My voice went pretty high-pitched.”

The piece of jewelry, he would recently come to learn, dates back more than 500 years and features the initials and symbols of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

The pendant is attached to a chain of 75 links and crafted out of 300 grams of 24-carat gold, reports The Guardian, and is decorated with a bush bearing the Tudor rose and a pomegranate, Katherine’s symbol.