You guys who don't like the Brit laws are plain nuts!! They have the ability to find much better stuff there and state owned land is not governed against detecting as it is here. They don't have myriads of various village, town, or city ordinances against detecting. If those idiots had turned the finds over to the coroner and they were declared treasure trove the finders would have been paid a fair market value for their efforts. In England you can keep all the modern (over there it's hundreds of years) coins and jewelry you find but if it is ancient and historically important you must turn it in and if it is declared important you will be paid fair market value. Any finds purchased from detector folks get displayed in museums for all to see. There are many gold and silver coins found over there going back to Roman times that are not considered "trove" and anybody can keep those. Just look at the finds by Crusader here on t-net. There is a lot more land available to hunt legally over there than here considering the size of their country. If we had such laws here there would not be all the restrictions making state and national land off limits like it is to us now. There just as here if you dig on illegal sites you face jail. You cannot even have an operable detector in your trunk while driving around Gettysburg battlefield.