Hi, Chug kkeps everything he finds, til he gets home, if it is jewelry, I claim it, in fact, I'm wearing a wedding set he found!!!! If someone comes along to ask for help, he gladly helps, and we are in the process of trying to find the owner to a WW2 medal and dogtag he found!
I'm happy to sell if I can get a good price. There's also the security side of things. I recently sold most of my Roman jewellery/fibula's etc found over many years as it was impossible to keep them in a bank with bronze disease being a constant problem. A friend of mine kept his at home and lost 18 years of finds when he went away for a weekend.
I only let museums have items on loan otherwise they can be sold off at any time.
Sell it! A little is easy to sell quietly. Get to much and it draws attention. 15 or 20 grams is not going to attract attention. Try unloading two pounds quickly. Sell it as you go and put the cash away in your mad money rainy day stash. If you die and still have it laying around it will just be sold at a yard sale and you will do flips in that box. Bummer!
I'm a hunter not a collector. If it has monetary value, I sell it. However there exceptions like the 200 year old ax head that I conserved. I put so much effort into it and it turned out so well that it now serves a useful purpose as well as a decorative purpose on my bookshelf.
it just depends on what it is. finding it is a big thrill for me. not so much hanging on to it. if the kids want something I usually give it to them, otherwise I sell it if I can
Don't sell coins (except for 1) and used to sell the common relics as well as a lot of quality button doubles which were easy to part with for the cash. These days things are different, the "junk" isn't even worth the cost to ship, our best producing button sites have dried up and new ones just don't seem to happen, and so far there has not been a one target big score in 2010. For me it totally depends what it is as I could easily keep something worth 10k if I liked it, but sell something worth a couple hundred if I had little interest in the history of the find. Bottles and modern jewelry would be two of the type of things that would hit the auction block if I found something decent.
I gave most of my silver rings to my grandaughters. I have pretty much kept everything else but at the price of gold now it is sure tempting to sell off my few gold trinkets just to see what they are worth. Monty
I sell some and I keep some. I like to show people what I have found. As I get questions if I ever find anything intesting. When the kids want something I usually let them have it. I keep the diamonds when I sell the gold......Matt
I used to sell a lot of my finds, especially during the hey day of civil war relic hunting around Centerville and Manassas when the construction boom was uncovering yards of history and it seemed there would be no end to the prizes one found. A lot of the "junk" and common stuff mostly, it got to the point where I had several five gallon buckets full of civil war bullets.
But I could kick myself and some of the things I sold or traded.
Some things I preserved and will pass on to grandchildren, included are a few
rarities, remember History is the greatest treasure and priceless.