Congratulations to Cash4Gold becoming the butt of jokes from now on around here! :)

Don't take this to mean that you should spend all your time metal detecting. It really helps to live somewhere with a long history of cultures that routinely hoarded gold. Most of the United States does not fit this description.

@fantomesq: I'll bet Terry can get exactly 3x more if he calls Cash4Gold's customer service line & complains.

Wait, so... Half goes to the farmer, half goes to the crown...

He's not keeping any?

@Moonshadow101: 1/4 to farmer, 1/4 to metal detector dude, 1/2 to the Crown.

@Moonshadow101: half gets split between him and the farmer, the other half goes to the crown

@Laura Northrup: Ahh, thanks.

@Laura Northrup: I know that's what the article says but I'm nit sure that that is correct. Quoting from the NYT article:

The crown's practice, established in part by the many shipwrecks recovered off Britain's shores, is that a reward equal to the value of the items - likely to be set in a bidding war among British museums - will be divided between Mr. Herbert as the finder and the farmer who owns the field where the discovery was made.

Sounds as though the finder and the land owner get half each and the crown doesn't take anything.

@Moonshadow101: Half to the crown sounds like a lot. Is that in the form of tax, some rule about ancient findings, or was it crown land? I'm assuming not the third as 1/4 going to the farmer would sound like it's his/her land.

@fantomesq: According to the BBC, it is split 50/50 between the landowner and the finder (nothing to the crown).

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Expect a spike in the purchase of metal detectors, as millions of people around the world decide they're the next ones to find a priceless hoard of gold. They'll figure if this guy did it, they can too. They'll just ignore the astronomical odds against something similar happening to them.

You see, that's why priceless hoards of gold are ... well ... priceless. Their rarity makes it that way. If they lurked everywhere under every rock, they'd have no value.

It's a similar effect to the rise in antique prices when the Antiques Road Show came out. Suddenly everyone wanted top dollar for their old junk, 'cause they were all convinced the piece of trash that's been collecting dust in their attics, is the next "national treasure." Hey, it happened to someone on ARS, why not to them too?

... ain't greed wonderful?

@fantomesq: Under UK law, everything found in a treasure trove belongs to the crown. However, they reserve the discretion to give an award not exceeding the value of the treasure to interested parties. From the second article it sounds like the finder is a nice guy and willing to give the owner half of his half. But the crown could, and may very well, do that anyway.

Here's a story by a writer who tried metal-detecting, and discovered that for most people it's "the world's worst hobby."

[www.slate.com]

@PsiCop:

Don't forget Barrett-Jackson. Every engineless rust-bucket 1960s heap is worth 5 grand (in the imaginations of the sellers...for the first few months of them trying to sell.)

Why s ths n Cnsmrst?

@Mackinstyle: All land in the UK is Crown land, technically. Property law there is not what most Western countries would recognise as property law.

@TechnoDestructo: That's why I do my metal detecting in Tuscon.

"People laugh at metal detectorists," Its true, when I read the word "detectorist" I did laugh.

@Lincolnsbeard33:

Hey, I'm in Tucson, too.

I'm not sure, though...were the spanish really that big into hoarding?

Dude! Just like the Roald Dahl story "The Mildenhall Treasure"!

@TechnoDestructo: Heh, funny you should mention that. A few years ago (hmm, more like 20!) I knew a guy who had a mound of rust — er, a dilapidated pick-up from the 50s — in his yard. He insisted he was going to sell it, once he got the right offer. If anyone pointed out that it was beyond the point where it could be fixed up and run again, he'd always insist there were collectors of this type of truck out there who'd be willing to buy it for parts.

That's right, he expected some wealthy collector to pay him a couple grand just to get "parts." Not that any of the "parts" on the thing were worth using ... the whole thing had rusted almost beyond recognition.

Well, that pile of rust — er, truck — stayed there until he died about 5 years ago and his family got the yard cleaned up. I'm betting they had to pay a fortune to have it removed, since it was an environmental hazard. Would've been much cheaper for him to have had it towed away long before that.

But no ... not as long as wealthy collectors were out there willing to pay a fortune for "parts."

@PsiCop: They will skip reading the paragraph where he says he spent 18 years getting nothing! 18 YEARS! Not just the time he was unemployed and on welfare (as the title of the story may lead one to believe).

@fantomesq: I wonder how much they'll pay out for next year's golden turd.

@gtheule: No one in the US owns land either. If you don't pay rent (property taxes) they take it back.

@TechnoDestructo: LOL, no. Good luck though. They were specifically determined not to hoard gold in the Americas. It was get in, take it, and haul ass back to Spain.

@MostlyHarmless: Wow, you're kidding me, right? You disemvoweled a *starred* commenter?

Man, I've NEVER been disemvoweled, and I don't have a star :-(

@Daveinva:

It can happen to anyone, even grannies like me.

@Aladdyn:

LOL, I know. It's like "taxonomist" or some other fancy occupation.

@Daveinva: umm... actually, yes, I am kidding you. I self disemvoweled ;)

(The comments disemvowelled by Roz have a little grey box with an "a" in it.)

And yes, even star commenters get sliced and diced if they dont behave. And I've been disemvowelled before. In the famous "Th NR ncdnt":

[consumerist.com]

My wife and I have detectors and we have found hoards of beer pull tabs from the ancient past. ( The 70's)

I used to metal detect when I was in my teens (I know, I was a geek) and I did find some things of value which I was ultimately able to sell to a pawn shop for several hundred dollars. I also did find Civil War era artifacts and a not too shabby amount of (mostly silver) jewelery. You really do have to do your research and know where to look, though.

Then again, there were also millions and millions of pull-tabs. God, I hate pull-tabs.

@TechnoDestructo: Bah. You're crazy. The search for Elvis' gold lives on. And if you think Elvis didn't hoard gold, then you need to turn in your US citizenship.

@Jesse in Japan: One day, a few thousand years from now, some archaeologist is going to find pull tabs and theorize that these must have been the trigger mechanism for the nuclear hand grenades that we savages used on each other!

With that kind of money, he'll be taking golden showers from now on.

@TVarmy: Yeah, but I don't think you need bother with that if you live in Wyoming or North Dakota or whatever.

If you aren't in an area with a known eccentric, or a history of piracy or Spanish colonies, I'm not sure the investment in a metal detector will pay off like this.

I was wondering why this was here, and then I got to the last line and it all made sense. Well played.

@CumaeanSibyl: Hahaha yup. I love how this whole article is just an excuse to make a Cash4Gold joke. Great Job Laura.

@TechnoDestructo: maybe not, but i live in CT, an area rich in people that stash their money in "bank of backyard".

plus, capt. kidd's gold is still around here somewhere...

Sigh. This will be enough to keep another few generations of innumerate obsessives doing the metal detecting thing even though the odds are orders of magnitude worse than even winning the lottery.

At least it's a fairly harmless hobby other than the wasted time.

@G.O.B.: Come on!: It also would've helped more if they had found much gold in the northern parts they went after. They mostly found "culinary gold" by bringing Chocolate, Potato's, Tomatoes, and hordes of silver.

@mac-phisto: It's a metal detector not a nutmeger detector :P

@fantomesq: That Cash4Gold quip had me laughing pretty hard. Awesome Laura.

@henrygates: @gtheule: Look up "fee simple" and "allodial title" in wikipedia some time... fascinating stuff

"Cash4Gold, incidentally, contacted the Herbert with an offer of $14.37 for the entire cache."

Oh man, I lolled so hard. haha

@psm321: mmmm ... allodial title

History buff and metalsmith here -- if I had the cash, I'd be going over there to see the pieces while they're on display now. Just looking at the pictures is exciting; actually being able to make notes on the construction of the pieces in person would probably make me light-headed with joy. I'm so glad they've been found and that they'll be studied and protected.

@MostlyHarmless:

Christ, I just went back and read that thread, that might be the single funniest thread I've ever seen. It reminds me of the Jezeboards, it was fun trying to reconstruct the commentary sans vowels.

This just in "Cash $ Gold Demands apology from website!"

@TechnoDestructo: Yes, but they took their hoards back to the motherland.