Farmer Asserts his Rights

Farmer Silas Brown (More clear evidence that Sainsbury’s should be in charge of metal detecting! 04/02/2018) offers other British landowners some good advice about letting artefact hunters walk off with historical artefacts found on their property (which by law are also their property) without some kind of independent valuation. Look at the valuing your finds page of the Searcher magazine (beloved on the PAS), everything has its value and cumulatively a finds pouch full of bits of old metal taken away month after month adds up. He found a post on a metal detecting forum about the owner of a small local farm who had given metal detectorists permission to search for artefacts and take them away because:

Some needing recording with our FLO.

Some? Who selects which archaeological evidence is recorded in the public domain, and what is pocketed by collectors with no record? And on what grounds? Anyway,

In [sic] the beginning of December the farmer asked if they could have the finds back over the Christmas period to show their friends and family. They would then be returned to us. January rolls in and we get an email saying they have decided not to return them but to keep them all themselves. A lesson has been learnt…….”

As Farmer Brown notes: 'the “lesson learnt” we can assume, is that verbal agreement or not, the farmer will never ever be given his property again!'. It seems that the landowner realised  what he had let the artefact hunters get away with. As Farmer Brown notes:

Anyone who is willing to take things home without showing you or asks you to trust THEIR valuation and assessment is doing so for a reason, and it’s not for your benefit. Ever.

.(By the way, note that the original thread 'Finders Beware' mentioned by Farmer Brown has already been removed from the public forum - so you cannot see what utter selfish oiks with an over-inflated notion of entitlement some metal detectorists are... the link above is to the cached version).