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The Curse Of The Buried Treasure


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This is a lengthy article about the hoard finds in England.  It follows the saga of two detectorists who found some great objects in 2015.

We are often times a forum that has many more details than the reporters so maybe there is someone here who can help us understand even more.

I hope the link works for everyone.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/16/the-curse-of-the-buried-treasure  

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Thanx for sharing this link.  It was well-written by the author.

 

Sshheeesk what a soap opera of ingredients !   Lots of mistakes on the md'rs part :  Namely, venturing off the land they had permission on, and inadvertently getting their find across a border, onto the next farm land.  Tsk tsk (sounded like an honest mistake, that ONLY came to light when they had to split hairs after finding the hoard).    And then their inability to be a little frickin' discreet, in the first place , AFTER having found it.

 

But a very big part of the Soap Opera, you'll notice, is the UK law system that hoards belong to the crown.  Oh sure, supposedly the crown pays you fair market value, but as you can see in this link, it just adds one more layer of bureaucracy (which , as you can see, is riddled with purist archie's lovely inputs 🙄 )  

 

If this had happened in the USA, it would have removed that 3rd to 4th party input.  It would have been utterly between you and farmer Bob how you wanted to split it.   And in the USA, if you show up at a coin dealer with a super rare coin (the 3rd one known to exist), NO ONE sits around and speculates "did this come from a cache ?".   It's of utterly no concern and no business to the buyer here in the USA, as to the origin (even if you show up with 5 of the same coin, that evidences they were buried side-by-side, as in this story).  Simply because there is no mandate here to "declare" such things.

 

Yet despite this bureaucratic mess that results from this UK crown law thing, some USA md'rs somehow have the impression that it's a "good thing".  Or that it "opens up cool sites".   But on the contrary :  You can hunt farmers fields here too, with permission.  Thus it's not "opening up more sites".  And as for the fair-market-value payout, well so too can we do that here too (without all the legal bureaucratic maze of hoops) :  It's called ebay.  

 

So I am glad we do not have the UK system, as evidenced by this link.

 

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