Dang, I never would have turned em into any gooberment. The stuff dreams are made of - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8_hGlwau3A
Hear hear! It's the one part of the article that angers me. Finders keepers. Does government not pillage its citizenry enough?
I think it would have been different if it had been inside the pub. I guess this qualifies as an archaeological find, but the 1600's isn't exactly old in Ireland.
If the government keeps them the finders will be paid the fair market value of the coins. So the finders can't lose. On the other hand if they hadn't turned them over and the news got out it could have cost the finder jail time and a fine greater than the value of the find. I do think though that if the local museum gets them and because of insurance reasons they are just going to display replicas, they should just go the replica route and allow the finder to keep the coins.
Are you certain of that? It's not a rhetorical question - I just don't know how the law works in these things.
I cannot say for Ireland and what it's laws are, but the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Britain works very well and the finders are awarded full market value of their finds by the government. Even when a find doesn't have significant monetary value - but if it tells a story because of where it was found, or where it was from, it can be reported through the programme. I can understand where American readers would be a bit put off by the whole affair, but really it does work and well. I myself own a 17th century token that was found in Shropshire - it was reported to the PAS because it was not English, but had somehow travelled from Ireland to rural Shropshire back in the 17th century whence it was lost. It was found by a detectorist in 2007 and reported due to the fact it was an Irish token from Cork that somehow ended up in the north of England. Sure it was not a significant monetary find, but the find illustrates that tokens may have travelled around more than we think they would have. I had to have the dealer who had it get an export license to be able to export it from the UK - it took a couple of days and they posted the token to me.
I'm pretty sure that shipwreck treasure found off the U.S. coast is property of the state off whose shore they were found. There is a finders fee, though. A percentage that the discoverers keep. The finders of the SS Central America didn't get to keep all the dough from the sale of all that. IDK. I think that's right, though.
Depends on how far offshore they are. Within territorial waters they below to the state, but the state will usually enter into a contract deal with the salvager. In international waters different maritime law applies. Actually they did get to keep most of it. The insurance companies that had insured the cargo back in 1857 tried to grab most of the treasure but the courts eventually awarded them I believe something like 10% of it. A better example might be Mel Fisher and the Atocha. Fisher had entered into a contract with the state of FL to give the state 25% and Fisher 75%. Then when he found the wreck in FL territorial waters the state tried to lay claim to the entire treasure. The court eventually found in Fishers favor and decided that he was entitled to 100% of the treasure, but he honored the original contract with the state. (Good move because he later executed other contracts with the state which would have been a lot more difficult if he had kept all the treasure.)
Are those stock photos of the coins or actual images of the find? The article mentioned 80 some coins but not that many are feature in the attached pictures.
