The first hoard was found in an earthenware pot buried about 10 feet (3 m) beneath the doorstep of the house at the corner of Old Buttermarket and St Lawrence Lane in Ipswich, which had previously belonged to numismatist James Conder (1763–1823), when it was demolished during road widening in 1863.

The coins were all silver pennies of the reign of Æthelred the Unready, minted in London and Ipswich.

[2] Five neck ornaments called torcs were discovered in 1968 by the operator of a mechanical digger preparing the ground for the construction of new housing in Belstead, near Ipswich, for which the driver received £45,000;[3] a sixth torc of a slightly different design was discovered a year later by the owner of one of the newly completed houses when sorting through a pile of earth left by the building in his garden, for which he received £9,000.

They are made from green gold as they have a lower proportion of silver in them than later finds, leading British Museum experts to date their manufacture to about 75 B.C.

[4] The museum estimates that the maximum neck diameter of the people who wore these torcs was 18.7 centimetres (7.4 in).