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local tv: metal detectorists vs archaeologists
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Paul Barford
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Re: To save anyone the trouble....
May 30, 2007, 09:21
moss wrote:
BUT what do I find under Durotrige coins - first and foremost Ebay - come and get the best deals on Ebay !!! not of course forgetting all the coin dealers that are liberally sprinkled over the page as well. You can't, when all is said and done, argue away the physical evidence that is out there. Heritage should'nt be up for sale, it should'nt be in the market place at all


Thanks Moss for pointing that out. The massive scale of British artefacts passing through eBay – apparently most of them unrecorded by PAS – is a constant and highly visible reminder of the scale of the losses the British archaeological resource is suffering to feed the worldwide demand for antiquities as “collectables”.

Monitoring of eBay.uk sales by the Portable Antiquities Scheme in August and September 2006 enabled a quantification of the number of antiquities being sold. http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/ebay.pdf It was found that almost 3,500 ‘antiquities’ were offered for sale on just this one eBay outlet each day. Of these almost 600 ‘British antiquities’ were offered for sale there each day (including a large number of items classifiable as ‘Treasure” under the 1996 act which had not been previously reported as the law requires). This works out at some 42300 ‘British antiquities’ sold through eBayUK alone in each year. A sobering fact is the realisation that – since few “detectorists” will admit to doing it for the money - what many British artefact hunters sell on to dealers or put on eBay themselves are in many cases only duplicates and other items unwanted for their own collections (and/or not saleable to other types of dealers). The vast majority of unreported and reported finds are put in personal collections by the hundred, not on eBay.
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