Tanja Höls told The Local she was doing her normal rounds of storerooms in the Passau state library in Bavaria when she decided to open up the inlaid wooden box and see what was inside.

“The box itself was fairly unspectacular, it looked like a big jewellery box, with lots of little drawers inside,” she said.

“So I pulled open one of the drawers and there were some coins in it. And I pulled a couple more open, and there were more coins – lots of different ones, different sizes and different metals.” Keep Reading