STAFF at the County Museum at Hartlebury hope to be coining it in soon thanks to the diligent detective work of a Kidderminster man.Phil Harriman with his metal detector in front of a Worcestershire County Museum display of the earlier cache of coins he found.

Phil Harriman, of Spencer Street, unearthed a cache of 15 bronze Roman coins, dating back to around 300AD and complete with inscriptions of busts of Emperors of the period.

He found the coins in July, 2003, buried in pasture land near Chaddesley Corbett.

On Tuesday at a rarely held inquest at the Coroner's Court in Stourport, Worcestershire coroner Victor Round ruled that the coins, varying in date from 280-315AD, be declared treasure trove and, as such, belonged to the state and not to the finder - Mr Harriman.

This paved the way for the coins to, hopefully, go to the Worcestershire County Museum at Hartlebury, delighting Mr Harriman, who works as a volunteer there.

At Hartlebury, they will join an earlier discovery of 419 coins Mr Harriman found in the same field in 1999.

Together, the two quantities of unearthed coins represented a "unique find in North Worcestershire", David Kendrick, officer for archaeology at the museum, said.

He explained: "The coins will be firstly offered to the British Museum but I am pretty sure they will not want them. They will then be offered to us."

He added they would first have to be valued by experts, which would compensate the finder and the land owner.

Mr Kendrick said: "I cannot pre-judge the findings of the valuation committee but I very much hope we shall be able to raise the money to buy the coins."

Mr Harriman, who has been scouring fields around north Worcestershire with his metal detector for ten years, said the coins were between four and ten inches below the surface.

They would have been buried with the earlier coins in a pot, the fragments of which he unearthed with the 1999 find.

"As the field has been ploughed over the years the latest coins have been scattered and separated from the rest. It is a wonderful feeling when you think you are the first person to touch these things since around 300 AD."

Treasure trove inquests are held when valuables are found and the owner cannot be traced. Finders of such items must report them to the coroner.

He will rule them treasure trove if they are either made of silver or gold or, in the case of items made of a base metal, such as the coins, if they are over 300 years old and there are more than ten.

Referring to Mr Harriman as an "experienced and respected metal detectorist" Mr Round said the coins he had found met the treasure trove criteria, according to a report by Lisa Voden-Decker registrar of the British Museum.

They also qualified as treasure trove because they were part of the earlier hoard, he said.

Angie Bolton, senior finds liaison officer with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, based at the Commandery in Worcester, had catalogued the cache for the inquest.

She said the coins, now tinged a powdery blue-green with corrosion, had possibly been buried in the field for safety while someone went to market.