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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 216681, member: 25&quot;]<i>They become property of the crown. The crown generously allows them to be sold to select museums. Not the free market. The finder then gets a fraction of the sale price. Usually there is a pre-agreement with the land owner that gives them a fraction of the finder&#039;s fraction.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>This is actually to mis-state the situation to make it sound worse than it is.</p><p>Britain has the most generous &#039;treasure trove laws&#039; in Europe, and possibly the world, or that part of it that has such laws.</p><p><br /></p><p>If an item is deemed to be subject to the found antiquities laws (the test is that the items are determined to have been hidden rather than simply lost) The finder gets the full open market value of the items, or gets to keep the items if they are deemed not to be all that interesting or valuable, or antiquities. The legal framework awards the landowner half the value.</p><p>The laws are framed unusually sensibly for laws, to encourage the preservation of stuff like this, by removing financial incentives to conceal them. It costs the state a relatively trivial amount, especially compared to many more questionable arts subsidies and encourages compliance with more carrot than stick. </p><p>You still get night-hawks detecting on prohibited sites like sceduled ancient monuments, Davey may have some idea if this activity has decreased in recent years.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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