Thursday 1 February 2018

Metal Detecting: 'Not in it Fer th' Munny'? Except when they are


As John Winter narrates it, when detectorists Paul Adams and Andy Sampson
stumbled on a hoard of gold coins in a ploughed Suffolk field, they believed their luck was finally in! The discovery must have been very exciting for them. Just a bit! A hoard of 54 ancient gold coins is basically the holy grail for detectorists [...] … and potentially lucrative. The Telegraph reports Andy as saying, “We weren’t sure how much they might be worth but we had six Emperor Nero coins and knew they were worth £26,500 each … we sat there in total disbelief.” [...] Their friend’s experience told him that the marks on each coin denoted they were reproductions and hence worth very little. Just a small detail lost on the newbies … but they DID know how much a pukka coin might be worth!
Like most Treasure hunters no doubt. 'Not in it fer th' munny' goes the mantra (derivative from the PAS insistence that their collector-'partners' are some kind of 'citizen archaeologists' like the Fleischmans).

Here is a Nero aureus which is probably what the guys saw online when they tipped out this group of replicas including a substantial number of 'fourth century' coins - note the pathetic way it is being marketed ('a lifelike and detailed portrait of Emperor Nero, one of the most cruel of all emperors').   

Vignette: All that glitters is not gold.

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