Posted on 11/05/2009 11:46:18 AM PST by BGHater
Five days after he took delivery of a metal detector and seven steps into his first treasure hunt, a novice archaeologist has helped to rewrite Scottish history and may be a millionaire after he unearthed four 2,300-year-old torcs made of pure gold a few feet from his parked car.
David Booth, a game warden at Blair Drummond Safari Park, in Stirlingshire, bought his £240 detector from a website that claimed “treasure need not be an idle dream”. What then seemed an absurd sales puff has proved strangely prophetic. The hoard he discovered at the edge of a field was described yesterday as “prime Iron Age bling” by one leading archaeologist and is conservatively valued at £500,000, rising to £1.5 million.
Mr Booth, 35, said there was a “sense of disbelief” about his discovery. “I saw a glimpse of one of them, then uncovered the rest of the hoard. They were in a wee group. Half me was saying, ‘that does look important’, but I was thinking I couldn’t be that lucky on my first go.
“I took them home, gave them a wee clean up and went online. I looked at some torcs and kind of guessed this was iron age history.”
He guessed correctly. Mr Booth’s find, made on September 29, is the most significant discovery of Iron Age metalwork in Scotland and is said to be of international significance.
The hoard comprises four necklaces, all dating from the 3rd century BC. Two ribbon torcs, in perfect condition, are relatively simple in design and represent a local style of jewellery made from a twisted ribbon of gold. A third, broken item is half of an ornate torc of southern French origin, probably from the Toulouse area and the only one of its kind found in Britain.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Bling ping.
Just WOW.
Looks like he did OK -- but I flashed on those "Antique Roadshow" episodes where someone scours an antique with steel wool to make it look nice and fetch a higher price. D'oh!
Well that wasn’t hard at all, now was it? Like those who win the lottery buying their first ticket.
Now he can afford to get some serious dental work done!
If this happened to me the first thing I’d have to spend some money on is a new pair of underpants.
That's one heavy detector! ;-)
Beautiful!!!
OUCH!!!
I’ve been metal detecting for quite a few years and would love to be able to go to somewhere that has more ancient history than Michigan. That’s what I call a nice find!
Guess it beats a pawn shop or eBay or a fence. I suspect the coppers’ll scour stolen property reports going back decades.
He could be the luckiest man in Scotland, or ... something else.
Some of those images were from Getty, which does not allow its images to be posted on FR, so your comment 1 had to be removed.
Only five posts before someone had to take a pot shot at the guy's teeth.
Good one - hadn’t thought of that.... Very good play on it
Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret. - Robert E. Lee
7 steps??
Bump...
And yet, the teeth comment appears to be a wee prophetic!
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