"A lovely find": It's got pictures and writing on it - and wottalott've them we got! [UPDATED]

"A piece of history in your hand"
 versus archaeological evidence

Hooray, hooray..

Dr John Naylor @DrJohnNaylor
This is an amazing achievement, 1.5 million finds recorded by @findsorguk. A lovely find for the milestone too, a 13th-century #medieval papal bulla which acted as a seal of authenticity on papal documents. This one from #Shropshire is for Pope Innocent IV. https://twitter.com/findsorguk/status/1281000359876538378

But that is "1,500,005 objects within 959,943 records", but where are the missing 6,755,161 records since the start of the Portable Antiquities Scheme? In the light of this, in what way is this an "amazing achievement" when it seems nearly seven million recordable artefacts have been simply pocketed without a trace since the beginning of the PAS? Is that not, instead "shocking"?

Update 9th July 2020

@rickwills40

Metal detectorist, unconcerned about the scale of destruction caused by collection-driven exploitation of the archaeological record.

richard wills@rickwills40 W odpowiedzi do @PortantIssues
It's absolutely marvellous , well done Pas . A real figure from actual facts . Can't say anything about the " missing " made up number .

The actual facts are that despite 23 years' "liaison" with artefact hunters, PAS is in no position to provide any fact-based estimate of their own to challenge ours. In that case, ours is the best available until they do.

The fact also is that Mr Wills uses as his Twitter avatar photos of the obverse and reverse of the same snapped hammered coin metal detector find, yet refuses to admit whether or not it has been recorded by the PAS. There are many artefact hunters in Britain that are content to cash in on the legitimation that the PAS (and its "responsible metal detectorists") provides for their exploitative hobby, but in fact themselves do not produce more than a handful, if that, of their own collection for recording.