29 July 2009

Is there anyone who doesn't like treasure stories?


Housewife finds £250,000 treasure with metal detector
Mrs Hannaby, 57, from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, made the discovery while out on one of her regular six-hour Sunday detecting walks... The treasure had been buried four inches below the ground for around 500 years... Roger Bland, head of treasure at the British Museum, describes the item - which at 2.8cm by 2.3cm, is barely larger than a postage stamp - as an "important find", and said he regrets that the museum does not currently have the funds to buy it. As one of only three of its kind to have survived, the find could be worth even more than £250,000, and its engraving is being compared to that of the Middleham Jewel, which sold at auction for £1.3million in 1986 and was later resold to the Yorkshire Museum for £2.5million. [photo credit]

Treasure hunters find Bronze Age axes

An amateur treasure hunter has unearthed a hoard of bronze age axe heads thought to be worth about £80,000... Mr Peirce found dozens more and, over the following two days, he and a colleague, Les Keith, uncovered nearly 500 bronze artefacts dating back 3,000 years.

Treasurer hunters battle over £500,000 hoard

Metal detecting enthusiast Michael Darke, 60, realised he might be on the trail of a major treasure find when he found 10 Iron age coins buried in a meadow... Within an hour of arriving in the field on March 30 last year, the pair had unearthed the remains of an Iron Age pottery cooking pot containing another 773 gold coins.

I am recurrently dismayed that the ancient Romans and Celts didn't lose stuff in Wisconsin. And I wonder how many European and British family fortunes have been started when a farmer plowed up pots full of gold. You just know that this burying and unearthing have been going on for centuries...

2 comments:

  1. And considering the condition of the world's financial institutions, there's sure to be a lot more burying to come!

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  2. I friend of mine, who had been living in the first house he bought for more than a decade, was doing some electrical work and found an envelope inside the wall.

    It was old and covered in caked-on dust with a rubber band that had long-since lost any semblance of elasticity.

    Inside was $10,000 in $100 bills.

    ReplyDelete