JCB driver Mark Copsey dug up the Roman coins while working as worth £175,000

A jubilant JCB driver is set to make a mint after he dug up 3,339 rare Roman coins at work.

Mark Copsey, 44, was leveling a recreation ground for a hockey pitch when he spotted the huge haul of silver coins in the soil.

The lucky driver could net £77,500 after a coroner ruled he will be entitled to half the value of the hoard which experts have valued at £175,000.

Mark told the treasure trove inquest: "I was stripping subsoil to the rock and was on an eight by ten meters strip to clear the second-to-final strip when I looked behind me and noticed a green color in the soil.

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"I stopped my machine and got out and investigated and discovered a broken pot with some sort of coins."

Mark scooped up the coins and put them in a plastic carrier bag.

He then phoned a museum about his find at Yeovil Recreation Ground in Somerset - where cricket legend Ian Botham played as a boy with his dad.

The coins are believed to have been buried on the edge of a small settlement around 270AD.

They include coins depicting an elephant and hippopotamus and the heads of empresses and emperors including Philip I who born in Syria around 204AD.

Archeologists found some of the coins had been stacked and carefully bound in textiles and string - some of which remained.

Mark, from Clare, Suffolk, said after the hearing: "When I found the hoard I did everything I could to act correctly and do everything above board.

"When I'm driving it's a health and safety rule to look behind me as well, that's how I spotted them.