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Originally Posted by pwd72s
Gotta be a LOT of metal history in Europe to dig up. Sounds interesting. I've thought of buying a detector. But then I thought of the many disappointments of finding things like old bottle caps..
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I used to read BBC News, so I got a lot of stories about amazing finds, some guy in a field finding a hord of Roman coins or viking gold or whatever. There's been some REALLY remarkable finds. And in the UK, if you find something, you report it, then some group checks it and if it's determined to be "treasure" then they pay you a "fair value" but I think it usually goes to a museum. If it's not treasure, then you get to keep it.
And much of the time, the folks are on someone else's property so presumably, they've worked out a deal with the property owner as well.
When I was 12/13, I lived in Pensacola. On 3-4 occasions guys would come out and detect in my "neighborhood" (lots of open land around it some townhouses). I know that they showed me musket balls and civil war buttons that they dug up while I was standing there.
I had a metal detector when I was about that age, but it took more patience than I had at the time, and it helped to be very methodical.
I'd love to get back into it, but I'm sure I'd find 10000 assorted nails, screws, nuts, washers, bits of barbed wire and pop-tabs for every interesting item that I found. I suspect that if you were in the right spots your ratio would be better although you'd find a lot less stuff.