Yet Another Hoard...

What a find! I can only imagine the look on my face if I turned that up.

Interesting, I'd never heard of Kett's Rebellion.

Just out of curiosity... I'd like to ask of you UK residents who might know...

When somebody finds something like this and then the govt overall, the govt conservators, the govt tax man and all the rest of the Empowered Predators
pounce on the poor guy and stip the meat off of his hapless bones, about how much of the "treasure" he found does the poor guy actually end up getting to keep?

bah! finders keepers!

crazy that a museum can buy it/keep it but the finder/owner can't. I could understand if the govt seized it out-right, but at least give the finder/property owner the option of paying the tax/fees and then do what they please with it.

In Britain, the local Coroner is the person in charge of determining whether a find is Treasure or not. If it's not "Treasure", as defined by the Treasure Act of 1996, found coins are the property of the finder and/or the landowner - if found by a metal detectorist, it's usually a 50:50 split, negotiated and agreed upon before the detecting begins. They are free to keep or sell the coins, however they wish.

In theory, anything found that is Treasure belongs to the Crown, to be disposed of as the agents of the crown see fit. In practise, for most hoards, the same 50:50 split applies. But the Treasure laws basically give the government the right to keep anything deemed to be of national historical and cultural significance and give/sell it to one of the state-sponsored museums. In such cases, the finder and landowner are usually "rewarded" with their share of what is deemed by a government committee to be fair market value of the Treasure, but they aren't allowed to automatically keep any of the finds themselves.

The government is not legally obliged to pay a reward, but they're pragmatic enough to know that if they simply seize the treasure without compensation or offer insultingly low rewards, then treasure-finders are going to be much more reluctant to co-operate and inform the government about future finds.

As for the tax man, well, the reward is considered "income", and would be taxed just like any other income.

Yeah, all I could say is that if I was in the UK and found something like this on my land, the UK government would never hear about it.

And if they ever do find out about it you will lose twice the value of the find and may do some jail time. It is much better to just report the find. You really can't lose to badly doing that.

Actually I would say the Uk system is one of the fairest systems in the world. Look at the looting of archaeological sites around the world and the loss of information because coins and other treasures are sold on the black market. The UK treasure laws enable the countries heritage to protected and for the finder and land owner to gain.

In Austria Metal detecting is banned....Coin hoards are rarely found ( at least reported) outside of Permitted university digs. Given the illegal nature of Metal detection and finding hoards and taking into account the porous nature of Austria's borders I would say many important finds simply disappear into the black market and we are all the worse off for it.

BTW I don't think UK taxes are as comparable to US Taxes(From my limited understanding I have the impression the US tax system is one of the most vicious in the world, It is highly possible I am wrong) For treasure finds in the UK the most likely tax applied would be capital gains ( 18%) with which the first GBP 10,000 is tax free.