Posted on 02/09/2006 4:47:45 PM PST by blam
FYI.
Guess what fools? If you do that, people who find stuff are going to shut up when they find rare objects and take them to a free-market nation to sell, and then you won't have anything.
Beautiful coin. Thanks for the article.
Interesting article -- thanks. It's hard to understand how such a coin could have been lost.
Museums can't talk, so I assume the loser who wrote the article is sympathetic to the theory of individual bureaucrats using the power of the state to steal --- in a free exchange society.
If I were that fascist (look up the classic definition) I would not want my name published either.
Chump change.
Try $7.5 million
Of course it was Brit who came up with it and they didn't whine about it then.
The Brits can be incredably cheap.
£357,000 for a coin that is priceless.
They will never find another Anglo Saxon coin of this vintage and historical value in such perfect condition.
If the amateur metal detector enthusiast hadn't found it quite by accident, it would have laid there for another 1000 years or maybe would never have been found.
If that's the case, why would the British Museum ever bother to bid on any auction in Britain? Competition only drives the price up; just wait until the end of the auction and scoop it up on the cheap.
The detail on the coin is incredible. How did the relief stand up to 1200 years of freezing and thawing and changes in humidity, temperature and pressures under a footpath? Something is fishy here.
How did they determine the gold content without taking a sample?
Actually the British system works pretty well for both the government and metal detectorists.
In many countries it is illegal to metal detect period. In England, they regulate it a bit allowing people to detect and keep what they find unless it is something of significant historic value. In that case the government buys the item(s) from the finder a negotiated fee in order to insure that the items stay in the country.
It's not a perfect system but I know many people who have detected in England and 99% of them like the system that is in place.
How did they determine the gold content without taking a sample?
>>>
Elementary. Ask Archimedes. "Eureka!"
and run naked through the streets.
From my reading of the article, unless more are found, all examples of this coin have been lost, except this one it seems.
the museum is angry at the size of its outlay, claiming that it should have been able to acquire it for two thirds of the price, and has called for reforms to art export laws... Many dozen Anglo-Saxon silver pennies have been unearthed but the Coenwulf mancus is only the eighth British gold coin - the museum now owns seven of them - cast between 670 and 1257 to be found. Earlier gold examples, including one from the reign of Offa, Coenwulf's predecessor as ruler of Mercia, were ceremonial coins.Poor babies. What a bunch of a-holes. Seems to me it would be cheaper to have museum employees roaming around with metal detectors.
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Britain is likely to lose magnificent Roman tombstone
The Times | February 09, 2006 | Dalya Alberge
Posted on 02/09/2006 10:59:33 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1575711/posts
I was stationed on an old airfield in Germany that was the site for Rudolph Hess' take-off for England.
Brought my metal detector one day and went to a far side of the site and started detecting.
All I found were old pieces of scrap metal. :-)
Amazing that the detail is so clean. Beautiful !!
The British Museum dropped out of the bidding so it was bought fair and square and that should be the end of it.
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