'Metal Detecting Finds – Saxon/ Roman/ Medieval/ Post Medieval Artefacts and Coins' Uncleaned and Unresearched - British Found - Cambs.As you look at all these ("not in it for the money") big-batches of ripped-up archaeological record fragments being sold day after day, week after week, just take a look at the state of them. They are being sold because the finder does not want to add them to his or her own collection, because 'not good enough'.
Fair enough, but let these people not say (as they continually do) that metal detectorists are 'saving' artefacts from being damaged by agricultural machinery and agricultural chemicals. There are few parts of the UK as intensively farmed as Cambridgeshire, with big farm machines running over the fields probably about a dozen times a year or more, and fertilisers and pesticides sprayed willy nilly all over the fields... so where, in the photo above, do we see traces of those recent (not old) breaks or mechanical damage? Can anyone see a single recent break in any of those objects? Tell us in the comments below. Now what about chemical damage and corrosion? Which of the objects in the photo shows any sign whatsoever of recent chemical damage? Again, comments below.
No actually, the effects described do sometimes happen, but they are not as ubiquitous as the supporters of hoiking-it-all-out-and-into-collectors-pockets (which includes the PAS) would have you believe. Time and time again eBay is replenished with artefacts that do not exhibit the effects claimed. That must tell us something, if not that we are being lied to.
And let's see how much the Cambridgeshire FLO's metal detecting partner sells his black soul for this time.
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