Posted on 11/24/2019 10:44:51 AM PST by lowbridge
Yes, I looked into it a few years back and was shocked at how generous they were.
It wasn’t their land.
The astronaut punching the Alien made me chuckle. Thanks for posting.
In the UK, proceeds from sale to a museum are split with the landowner and his tenants and the finder. Which usually results in way more return than melting down a coin.
“Technically, all hidden treasure found in the UK belongs to the Crown. The rights and legal obligations of the finders and landowners are covered by the Treasure Act of 1996. The law is different in Scotland, which still uses the older treasure trove common law rules...In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, finds must be reported to the Coroner within 14 days...The finder of treasure has no legal right to any payment at all....”
read more about the UK rules here:
https://www.tripsavvy.com/what-is-treasure-trove-1662358
Britain’s cultural heritage is founded in its history going back thousands of years.
The law exists to ensure that when finds of great historical significance are found they will wind up in museums and similar locations rather than risk being lost to overseas buyers or people who will simply hide them away.
And those who made the finds are compensated a fair amount for what they did - as the article says, these men would have received something like a third or half the value of the items - note - that is the theoretical value - it’s not the value a dealer would give you - you’d be lucky to get half or a third of the value from a dealer (because they have to make their profit as well).
There is also the matter of these types of treasure hunters and “detectorists” destroying archology while digging for treasure.
Archeological digs are methodically and often slowly conducted and great interest is given not only to the more monetarily valuable or museum display quality items but also things like even the smallest shards pottery which are invaluable for dating a site and animal bones that could indicate either domestic farming or substance hunting, small tools, arrows, and everyday items of no value on the resale market but invaluable for understanding the site as a whole and in a historical context, things like evidence of burning or of “industrial” activity (and by industrial, that doesn’t mean large scale factories but small scale metal working or even weaving, etc.)
And the layers in which each artifact is found can tell a lot about things like it’s age and the length of the occupation, whether it was a temporary encampment or had a history of longer and or of domestic occupation, such as for example signs of burials – either inhumations or cremations that can also say a lot about their religious beliefs (Pre-Christian or Christian or as is sometimes found on early to mid-Saxon and late Viking sites -a mixture of both), and the layers beneath said “treasures” about who might of occupied the land previously and even a small chance of what might have happened to them.
Someone who gets a hit with a metal detector and then just digs all hog wild with a big ditch digging shovel with only the hopes of finding bright shiny metal objects worth a lot of money on the illegal market, destroys everything else around it that IMO is more much more valuable in terms of history.
Metal detectorist destroys 5,000-year-old tomb while digging for treasure
That is not to give all “detectorists” a bad name as some are genuinely interested in the history and meticulously document the location, position and depth of their fines as would an archeologist and call them and the museum folks in to carry out actual excavations in some cases. They also ask the land owner’s permission before “detectoring” and do not destroy crops or other property belonging to and apprise the landowner and the authorities of any finds.
But then there are what are called “nighhawks” like the two sentenced in the posted article. They go on private lands without permission, often under the cover of darkness, they dig without respect to historical context, they don’t record or report their finds, robbing not only the historians and archeologists but also the land owner and the nation in the pursuit of a quick buck (or pound as it were).
This article does a good job of putting the problem into perspective and the issues with the treasure trove system in the UK, good and bad.
You lose the numismatic value by melting it down. There would have to be a way to get small amounts out of the country for sale.
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