A disgruntled metal detectorist commenting on Heritage Action's blog-post [about PAS altering their advice to landowners to encourage them to demand to see everything detectorists remove from their property] shows the depth of attitudes of entitlement of some in the milieu. He apparently sees nothing disturbing in writing:
Nothing wrong with showing all finds to farmers/landowners at all, but what happens if said landowner then says "I’ll keep this, and you can have the rest!!” This is what exactly happened when myself and a colleague who had detected a huge meadow for 8 hours were told when we showed the owner ALL finds we had. Most of it was Victorian coppers, musket balls, harrow toes, nails, and horseshoes, but there was one gold engraved 18th century ring with one sapphire still in place and possibly a second stone missing when the ring had been damaged by probably ploughing. He, and his wife, tore up their signed copy of our written 50/50 signed agreement, and thanked us to leave, forthwith [...] Landed Gentry.. but VERY few are Landed Gentlemen.Not like the pirates that think that by conning the landowner into signing a piece of paper it gives them carte blanche to walk off with whatever they please of the landowner's. This is disgraceful, and should be condemned. It shows some artefact hunters have no respect for property rights at all. A landowner should not only be seeing every item removed, but signing it over to the detectorist, and if he decides to keep something, or ask for payment of its full market value before parting with it, that is of course 100% his right to do so.
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