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I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be what’s called these days a ‘detectorist’, one of those people who wander the fields in all weathers looking for treasure with their metal detectors.
Now and again you hear of detectorists that have uncovered valuable hoards of coins or gold artefacts and, from what we read, their rewards can sometimes be phenomenal.
In 1996, the government introduced the Treasure Act, one of the more sensible pieces of legislation this Parliament has enabled. The Act gives folk who find buried artefacts to report them to the local coroner who, if he decides the finds are treasure and a museum wishes to buy them, they go before the independent Treasure Valuation Committee, who sit in the British Museum. The committee recommends a market value, then refers them to museums who may be interested in buying. If no museum is able to buy, the finds go back to the finders who are then free to sell them on the open market.
That all seems quite clear and I think the provisions of the Act are fairly well known among the public, particularly the detectorist community.
But one lady in Shropshire has fallen foul of the Act and has been prosecuted for failing to declare her find of an 14th-century silver French coin which, foolishly perhaps, she took along to a museum to value. Prosecution followed, though she was given a three month conditional discharge only and ordered to hand over the coin.
Curiously, the coin may not be a ‘coin’ at all but a rare ‘piedfort’, which was probably struck for ceremonial presentation in the French court of Charles IV and not used as currency.
It’s amazing what you can find buried in the earth. I must get myself a decent metal detector!
.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be what’s called these days a ‘detectorist’, one of those people who wander the fields in all weathers looking for treasure with their metal detectors.
Now and again you hear of detectorists that have uncovered valuable hoards of coins or gold artefacts and, from what we read, their rewards can sometimes be phenomenal.
In 1996, the government introduced the Treasure Act, one of the more sensible pieces of legislation this Parliament has enabled. The Act gives folk who find buried artefacts to report them to the local coroner who, if he decides the finds are treasure and a museum wishes to buy them, they go before the independent Treasure Valuation Committee, who sit in the British Museum. The committee recommends a market value, then refers them to museums who may be interested in buying. If no museum is able to buy, the finds go back to the finders who are then free to sell them on the open market.
That all seems quite clear and I think the provisions of the Act are fairly well known among the public, particularly the detectorist community.
But one lady in Shropshire has fallen foul of the Act and has been prosecuted for failing to declare her find of an 14th-century silver French coin which, foolishly perhaps, she took along to a museum to value. Prosecution followed, though she was given a three month conditional discharge only and ordered to hand over the coin.
Curiously, the coin may not be a ‘coin’ at all but a rare ‘piedfort’, which was probably struck for ceremonial presentation in the French court of Charles IV and not used as currency.
It’s amazing what you can find buried in the earth. I must get myself a decent metal detector!
.
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