5 ms·

It seems like the UK government’s Treasure Act really incentivizes the right kind behavior in these situations. He found it, contacted the right people and once

• yitchelle 8y ago
  How is the market value determined, especially for items that have never been sold on the market before?
  • hycaria 8y ago
    Rarity, significance, state of conservation... I'm not surprised a market value can be assessed by people working in the field.
    • blbviviv 8y ago
      There is a market for these things. Perhaps the treasury acts as escrow service, with an ever so slight bias!?
  • fredley 8y ago
    Typically at some kind of auction.
• gsnedders 8y ago
  The Treasure Act 1996 only has territorial extent over E+W+NI, notably excluding Scotland, where treasure is still dealt with under (Scots) Common Law. Notably, any reward is granted purely to the finder, though there is no default right to search land one does not own (and if discovered without permission of the landowner, there have been cases where the entire reward has been awarded to the landowner); de-facto, following the English and Northern Irish law, landowners normally grant access such that any reward is split equally.
• sandworm101 8y ago
  >> market value of the treasure Key words. If is isn't "treasure" it isn't subject to the act. Material belonging to British military units isn't treasure and remains property of the crown forever (basically all ship-related stuff). Anything else that once belonged to the crown still does. So if some lord buried a stash of silver and never dug it up, you may need to dig into family histories to determine if that lord's property had ever reverted to the crown. Treasure hunting isn't ever simple and you never really know if you can keep the stuff until long after the initial discovery. Note too that the act speaks of "two or more" coins. One coin is treated differently than a find of two. This goes back to an older distinction between buried treasure and lost property. A single coin may fall out of a pocket and be lost. Two coins together are presumed deliberately buried or otherwise hidden.
  • steve19 8y ago
    Has there ever been a case where treasure belonging to a lord whose assets were seized 500+ years ago was deemed property of the crown?
    • sandworm101 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove#England_and_Wales_common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove#England_and_Wal... "The Crown had a prerogative right to treasure trove, and if the circumstances under which an object was found raised a prima facie presumption that it had been hidden, it belonged to the Crown unless someone else could show a better title to it.[25] The Crown could grant its right to treasure trove to any person in the form of a franchise." So you didn't dig through the records to see if they have been seized. It belonged to the crown unless you could find reason why it should not. If there was no clear owner, it was presumed to be owned by the crown.
      • NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        That was back in the 19th century and earlier though. From around WW1 it became default practice to pay the full value if a museum took it, or return the items to the finder if not. The 96 act added nuance and the split with the land owner. Mainly, I think, thanks to detectorists finding stuff on land that was someone else's.
• flukus 8y ago
  How do they determine market value without a market?
• gred 8y ago
  Indeed. These sorts of finds rarely make the news in countries where metal detecting is explicitly and/or effectively against the law -- not because they're not occurring, but because they happen outside of the law and the artifacts are sold on the black market.