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Man Finds Roman Gold Coin Hoard Worth £100,000 With Metal Detector
An anonymous reader writes "A novice metal detector has found one of the largest roman gold coin hoards ever unearthed in the UK. From the article: 'National newspapers reported on Wednesday that the man, from Berkhamsted, had been sold a beginner’s metal detector from the town’s High Street-based Hidden History for £135. He is reported to have gone back with 40 of the “solidi” coins, dating to the last days of Roman rule in Britain, and asked: “What do I do with this?”'"
What else are you supposed to do with money? Of course, they may not be selling spears, shields and trebuches any longer.....
Using metal detectors without prior permission and a degree in archaeology is illegal here in Ireland, punishable by stiff fines and prison, as is wandering around the countryside with archaeological tools. Well technically the latter isn't illegal as such, but you'd better have a good reason for carrying them. Its understandable really given the quality and rarity of some of the treasures that have already been turned up I suppose, the government doesn't want looters making off with priceless artifacts to adorn their mantelpiece.
TFA is way out. The was a more valuable Roman find of Roman Torcs 3 miles to the west of Stirling in Scotland which netted around £4m which he had a share of £500k
What's interesting is that the Romans didn't last long in Scotland but there are still visible signs of our italian pals from 2000 years ago, such as the Fendoch fort in the Sma Glen north of Crieff and the fort at Braco some 5 miles south of Crieff.
We found some tunic broaches with a metal detector in my parents field a few miles away. Still looking for the pot of Roman gold. There are legends that Fendoch had a large stash of gold but there just legends and no one has ever found them plus metal detecting is illegal on recognised Roman forts which is a bit of a set back!
Man unearths 2000 year old bit-coin with metal-detector
An anonymous reader writes
"A novice metal detector has found one of the largest bit coin servers ever unearthed in the UK. From the article: 'National newspapers reported on Wednesday that the man, from Berkhamsted, had been sold a beginner’s metal detector from the town’s High Street-based Hidden History for £135. He is reported to have gone back with 40 of the bit coins, dating to the last days of 'Cameron' rule in Britain, and asked: “What do I do with this?”'"
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as long as he has the landowners permission he can dig ,
he cannot sell them though
if it goes as treasure trove then him and the landowner get to share the value
who where what when now?
The search was on private land. So they person that owns the land owns the stuff. Normally a farmer give permission for you to piss about in their land with a detector and if you find anything they'll give a 50/50 split.
http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba114/feat2.shtml
The Property Act 1925, and subsequent judicial rulings, state that a person owns everything which is in their land. This has been understood to mean, as Lord Renfrew put it when writing about an iron age hoard (in Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership, Duckworth 2000), that "the original owner of the land where the finds were made [is...] their rightful owner". This assumption is correct – so long as the artefacts were not removed from the land by a person authorised to do so.
Man Finds Roman Gold Coin Hoard Worth £100,000 With Metal Detector, Plans To Exchange Them For BitCoins - Slashdot
in Italy, if you find something on your own land, the owner of archaeological stuff is Italy, moreover the country can temporarily occupy the piece of land interested and the owner is entitled to indemnification.
This is why in Italy people does not find historical stuff on the owned lands...
as long as he has the landowners permission he can dig
With the obvious exception of land which covers scheduled monuments or Archaeological Priority Areas, where permission form English Heritage is needed (and rarely granted to individuals with metal detectors)
am I the only one smells a rat here? Gold roman coins are worth a lot more than gold alone, therefore a tidy profit is to be made by printing you are own fake roman coins and then claiming to have dug them up.
Run buy a bunch of those metal detector makers shares, quick!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The search was on private land. So they person that owns the land owns the stuff
My feeling is that, in the UK, there is a reasonably large exception to this, which is where the find constitutes "treasure" for the purposes of the Treasure Act 1996 (which has been extended by the Treasure (Designation) Order 2002).
Where a find is classified as treasure, it belongs to the Crown (or its franchisee, where there is one), "subject to prior interests and rights." (s4). Ownership of the *land* is not necessarily a sufficient prior interest or right here — to override the Crown's ownership, one would need to establish a right coming from the original owner of the treasure, such as being an heir to the treasure. (Paragraph 19 to The Treasure Act 1996 Code of Practice.)
The Act includes a duty to notify, within 14 days (s8).
I think in Italy you've got a much better chance of finding a roman coin in the soil than in the UK. :)
Regarding the owner, can you get back payment for rent from the government? They kept their property stored on your land for 2000 years.
If you find something in the U.S., keep your mouth shut or the Government takes the "historical" find, declares the site a national park and prevents anyone but scientists from studying/looting the treasure. Maybe not bad as all that, but you gotta be careful about showing what you found. If it's not worth all that much, you can "salvage" the site, just for the love of God, don't show them any gold or jewels. www.melfisher.com for an example of a successful salvage operator, who has incidentally, had trouble salvaging gold coin from shipwrecks in the past.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The sad thing is that by digging it up he's destroyed the archaeological context which might have shown why it was buried, when, and, to some extent, who by. The end of the Roman period in Britain is a very interesting period of history, but one about which we have far too little information. Yes, it's great that these things get found, but when you've found something, for heaven's sake leave it in the ground and alert the county archaeologists (or, technically, the coroner who will in turn alert the archaeologists, but...). You'll still get the 'treasure trove' value as the finder, and the context will get recorded.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
You couldn't get two bits for an arrowhead back in the 60s. Now you can't legally pick one up.
Fucking politicians.
We don't have such silly laws! So, it will be a big help when I'm using a metal detector to find those ancient Roman and Gaylick treasures - especially in the South East US! And I'll have the means too. See, I took ALL engineering and math classes in college - none of that nonsense liberal arts stuff like history and art! Nope!
Treasure (Designation) Order 2002 Does the title deed not establish a right? I guess if the dead person wanted their property back then they should have registered the lost property with the police :) I'd mod you up; but cannot. thank you for the links.
They kept their property stored on your land for 2000 years.
I don't have time to learn the entire history of land ownership of ancient Rome, but I doubt you owned the land 2000 years ago when the stuff was left there.
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Does the title deed not establish a right?
It's a good question, and I do not know the answer — my gut feeling would be that the title deed establishes title to the land and that, if ownership of the land on which an item was found is sufficient, I would have expected (perhaps too much to expect) that the code of practice would make it clear that ownership of land constituted a relevant prior interest. Similarly, since property must always have an owner under English law (it reverts to the Crown if no other owner is traceable, via bona vacantia, from memory), if ownership of the land did count as a prior interest, treasure would never go to the Crown as it would always be owned by the landowner, making the provisions redundant?
However, some of the material in the document you cited suggested that ownership of the land is indeed relevant, so it sounds as if further research is needed!
Actually, Romans had a "light" version of it, mostly in the form of money lending activities. Apart from loans, they were deposits, checks and currency exchange.
The early bankers, were already looked upon with contempt...We can now see why, by looking at what can happen when they are given too much power....
Only if the circumstances are strongly suggestive that the hoard was deliberately hidden with the expectation of later recovery by the owner -- treasure buried as part of the internment of a body are an obvious case where there is no intent to recover, hence the Sutton Hoo treasure was not treasure trove.
I seriously doubt it's worth £100,000, these stories always go over the top on the value quoting the price for mint coins in perfect condition in the existing market trading volumes. There was a recent very large hoard valued in the press at tens of millions of pounds, but the coins were so degraded they were worth only a fraction of their individual mint value, and there were so many coins in the hoard it would have depressed the market value if they had been sold.
The real worry here is the guy apparently didn't know what to do once he had found the coins, there are legal requirements to be met, and archaeological best practice to be followed. No-one should be sold a detector without first having to take a one-hour training course in their legal and moral obligations. That said, I work with responsible detectorists all the time, many are very good, but there are also many like this guy who do terrible damage.
Curiously enough, I doubt anyone else today did either! Thank you for bringing this highly salient point to our attention!
Then I pay a lot less in rent than I would actually renting, so I'm still coming out ahead. And I have an asset I can sell. And if the gov't decides they want to rezone my neighborhood, they have to pay me fair market value for it. But go ahead and keep claiming owning land is just like paying rent. It's not, but you can claim that.
The same principle holds in Egypt: if you discover anything interesting while digging, you have to report it to the Department of Antiquities. They may take over the site and do a dig, or whatever they see fit.
This is why I know people, from Alexandria, who found Roman era amphorae while digging the foundation of their apartment building just take them home and never tell the authorities.
I myself have seen Roman earthenware come out on a government owned building when digging for a data center power cable. The managers just said keep quiet, otherwise it will delay our own project.
The stuff is not even sold or goes on the black market, it sits in storage at someone's balcony or dumped as rubbish.
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This depends on what is found.
The first thing to consider is if you own just the land, or if you also own the Mineral Rights. In most cases as long as you own the mineral rights you can pretty much do what you want.
However, if you live within a city, you have to think about laws which might restrict digging or excavation of any sort (at least, without a permit). You might find that, for example, you're too close to a protected wetland or waterway to come in with a bulldozer, but might be ok using hand-tools. And any type of commercial use of the land might also have some restrictions on it.
Now, there is one major exception to the "pretty much do what you want" rule of thumb:
If you find Native American artifacts, burial grounds, or settlement remains, there are special rules which can apply. Certain artifacts cannot legally be owned by non-Natives without certain permits (like feathers from a Bald Eagle).
There's usually some kind of "treasure hunters" association who can give you details specific to your area.
I've been making the case that you can't really "own" anything that can be confiscated for taxes either, but let's not run off a clockwork-driven ideological recording.
If you "own" the property, you can apply the taxes on it against other tax liabilities. You can often apply depreciation. Stuff you can't do when someone else "owns" it.
Eminent domain is another matter, but my observations have been that it's the government that's more often taken to the cleaners when they buy up property, not the owners. The real stink of Eminent Domain is more often that "My Grandad and I built this house" or "We're a community. We've all lived here for 30 years". Those thing are intangible and have no absolute monetary value, even when they're more important to the inhabitants than simple cash compensation. And actually, some or even all of the inhabitants may be renters, not "owners", especially in old historical impoverished districts.
Judas was paid 30 denarians (which are SILVER). of course if you read The Dresden Files it becomes a plot point that all 30 became "cursed".
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Common wisdom when my father was in road construction was that if you found a burial or other historical site when excavating, you quietly reburied it and told no one. Especially burial sites. Find one and you're instantaneously one year or more behind schedule.
In the United States, it is a federal crime to even possess (let alone use) a metal detector on Federal Park property. This includes all national parks, historic sites, and some other locations owned by the government.
Several states also ban the possession and use of metal detectors on State-owned property.
Had he found this kind of stash in the US, it most certainly would have been confiscated by government in the name of national treasure or other such nonsense.
What?
Shop owners David Sewell and Mark Becher reported the find, and then joined a search party on the private land where the coins had been discovered.
If he was on private land in the US, he can do whatever he wants. State/public owned land is quite different obviously and he has no rights to its contents but if private land, it's yours. Obviously we don't have the history here that our EU counterparts do so it's sort of understandable the limitations there are on finds.
This is true enough. Since the 1960's much of the US Government has been infected with Leftists who don't believe in Property rights. thus they have spent 50 years slowly whittling away at it through laws passed at midnight on a weekday, various "rules" passed by unelected leftists bureaucrats, and by activist leftist judges. All with the intent of placing into law that you DON'T actually own any land or anything on or in it. this has been happening both at federal and state levels, with the more leftist controlled states being worse.
By way of example, see New York State. You own a farm? Discover oil, or coal, or some other mineral resource on it? Go ahead and TRY to sell that resource. You will find that your "Mineral Rights" don't actually exist. Oh, you still legally HAVE them, but you can't actually USE them due to all the other regulations in place.
The same goes with Archaeological finds, treasure finds, et al. If you find anything of potential archaeological, historical or intrinsic value on your property, TELL NO ONE.
- If it is archaeological, DESTROY IT or re-hide it as fast as you can. Or your entire property is forfeit to Eminent Domain as an Archaeological site.
- If it is historical, Keep it to yourself, unless you want your property declared a historical site and thus ineligible for further improvement. (IE: You won't be allowed to fix up your now historical house without a mile long ream of paperwork. Even if the roof is leaking.)
- If it is intrinsic, such as gold or silver coins, jewels etc, then TELL NO ONE, buy a small jeweler's forge and melt down the coins into small bars, remove the jewels from any settings and melt down the settings, then quietly place all of it into a safe deposit box (preferably in the caymans if you can afford it). Otherwise the US Government will simply TAKE IT from you and you will then have to pay a tax on the value of the stuff you now no longer have, thus bankrupting you for having the temerity to find something valuable.
One of the first things that despots and leftists do is remove personal property rights. If not directly, then by a thousand regulations. If you want to keep your stuff, then you keep quiet.
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I seem to recall, from reading about other similar situations, that the British government considers all finds of this nature to be the property of the government. Kind of like how in the U.S. the Feds now consider anything that falls from the sky and lands on Federal land to be federal property.
For some reason the Feds were pissed meteorite collectors were making money off of rocks from the sky and they weren't.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Since the vast removal or proerty right in the US were NOT done by liberals, I think you might want to STFU before looking even more stupid.
The rest of your post is nonsense as well. They only thing more incorrect then your post, is your sig.
Seriously, you are stupid and factually wrong. I just thought someone should let you know so you can work on that.
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It was the liberals on the US Supreme Court that tried to stand against such illegal confiscation.
Absolute hogwash. This is exactly the opposite of what happened.
Justices in the majority: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kennedy.
Dissenting justices: O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas