Aurous Sax

A treasure hunter found some Anglo-Saxon treasure, so says the BBC. In fact quite a lot of treasure, the final value, to be split 50/50 between the finder and land owner is £3.285M. The hundreds of gold and silver coins and jewelry will be bought by the state in the UK. Check out the photos of some of the stuff in the link. Using a metal detector to find treasure sounds like ti could be fun (you find treasure) but I imagine its probably soul crushingly boring, punctuated with back breaking work to dig up bottle caps. That said, the UK treasure law is pretty awesome I think. The state has first right to buy what is found, though it must be at market price. The money is split 50/50 between finder and landowner. This way people have little incentive to steal. I've read in Italy and Greece, where legally the state owns anything found, people never report finds so the archeology and the material itself is lost. Wikipedia has a good article on treasure trove laws.