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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lordmarcovan, post: 5265322, member: 10461&quot;]The United Kingdom has some of the most liberal treasure laws in Europe, if not the world, as I understand it.&nbsp; If a find is declared &quot;treasure trove&quot;, the finder and landowner split a reward.&nbsp; It&#039;s not just a trifling &quot;finder&#039;s fee&quot;.&nbsp; The government pays a fairly reasonable price for anything they take as treasure.</p><p><br /></p><p>But single coin finds tend not to be considered treasure trove.&nbsp; <i>Hoards</i> do.&nbsp; It&#039;s all about the archaeology.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think the British laws are reasonably generous, given that in many other countries, the government would essentially say, &quot;<i>Oh, hi, thanks for finding all that stuff for us.&nbsp; We&#039;ll take it away now.&nbsp; Payment?&nbsp; You want&nbsp; <u>payment</u>?!?&nbsp; Please don&#039;t make us laugh, you insignificant peon!&nbsp; Hahahaha!!!&nbsp; We&#039;ve got a nice prison cell for you if you don&#039;t shut up.&quot;</i></p><p><br /></p><p>So when nighthawkers in the UK get greedy and try to illegally steal their finds from Her Majesty&#039;s Government, Her Majesty and Her Government tend not to be very amused at all.&nbsp; Cheaters often end up cheating themselves out of the very rewards they could have legally obtained, and end up getting nothing at all- except maybe some time behind bars.</p><p><br /></p><p>The system of rewards there is an incentive to people to actually <i>report</i> their finds, and and the <a href="https://finds.org.uk/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://finds.org.uk/" rel="nofollow">Portable Antiquities Scheme</a> annually results in the recording of a great number of archaeological discoveries that would otherwise have been lost to history and science if the laws were tighter and confiscation was the norm.&nbsp; In places like that, people who know the government will seize their finds have no incentive at all to report them, and so the treasures disappear into the black market, losing any and all provenance that could have been studied and recorded for posterity.</p><p><br /></p><p>And in the case of most finds that are disclaimed by the British government- i.e., <i>not</i> declared treasure trove- the finders and/or landowners may keep them. I guess the finder and landowner split the proceeds between themselves without the Crown taking a bite, except for taxes, maybe?&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>And I think the majority of finds are <i>not</i> declared treasure.&nbsp; Only the more archaeologically significant and/or most valuable ones.</p><p><br /></p><p>My grasp on all this is a bit tenuous, but I do remember learning some of it when I was detecting for a week in England, and <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/highlights-of-my-2013-metal-detecting-week-in-england.287138/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/highlights-of-my-2013-metal-detecting-week-in-england.287138/">my finds</a> had to be reviewed before they would issue an export license to ship them overseas to me.&nbsp; I crossed the Atlantic on my homeward journey months before my finds did.&nbsp; Obviously, none of my paltry diggings were anything near the threshold of being declared treasure trove, so I got to keep everything.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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