Who Owns Buried Treasure? | Hacker News Reader

Who Owns Buried Treasure?

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41 pointsmud_dauber28 comments

In the UK, any hidden gold and silver more than 300 years old is generally assumed to be treasure and belongs to the Crown (although the finder is usually compensated). A lot of the ancient items in museums have been found by amateurs and claimed by the state in this way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_trove

TBH this makes most sense. This way they are available to researchers and are preserved for future generations. Otherwise those goods might disappear and be melted or similar.

It doesn't make sense at all, because this encourages people to destroy these kinds of things whenever they find them on their land. If you find treasure on your land and you report it then the government comes in and basically takes over your land for a while. They want to let archaeologists investigate, but you usually don't get much compensation. If you rely on that land to make ends meet then it's a bad idea to report it.

I think the rewards need to be high enough that people want to report these.

Edit: there was that case in France where a farmer found a rare mastodon skull and didn't want to bring attention to it because he didn't want amateur paleontologists on his farm: https://www.livescience.com/63060-farmer-finds-mastodon-skul...

"At all" is a very strong wording. Do you really not think that appropriate compensation is all that's needed for this approach to make perfect sense?

Sure, but we already have compensation that is supposed to be appropriate, but people clearly don't think it's enough.

You usually get, at least in the UK, what's assessed as the valuation. That's then split between finder and land owner.

So it's not like the rewards could reasonably be much higher.

But it doesn't matter for a farmer unless it's a large amount. If a farmer's fields are disrupted then he loses a lot of income, potentially even his livelihood for a while.

Then throw some dirt on top and 'discover' it anew during the harvest? If something has been there for hundreds or even thousands of years it can probably last another few months. Not really a workable solution for construction, but surely a farmer might get away with it? Or one might store a found object for a while before realising it's historical significance.

But you might still be in violation of the law. There's also the problem that the investigation on the land might take a lot longer than just a couple of months. We had an archaeological finding in our city that took several years before they could use the land again.

> this encourages people to destroy these kinds of things whenever they find them on their land.

Totally this.

My former boss owned an old farm house in Italy. He told me that all the neighbours were really worried about digging in their backyards and finding stuff from the Romans.

A neighbour tried to build a house once, the excavator started digging and "old stuff" came up. Somebody told the local police because they were not sure if it was important and immediately the construction site was shut down until the government started to investigate this lot.

Investigations took several years and no compensation was paid.

Since then, it's an unwritten agreement that nobody calls the police when something comes up and the excavator just crashes everything...

Summary: in the USA, the person who found it absent whoever put it there. If you can prove you put it there, you can have it back, but otherwise it seems to be the finder's. There doesn't seem to be any law about it, just case law.

Seriously, hope someone is willing to tackle this hypothetical scenario:

Land owners are unaware of a buried cache of gold that was robbed from an armored car in the prohibition era...

And it has to be dug up.

The spot is marked with a stack of large rocks. The previous owners were ostensibly always deterred by the threat of blasting caps being buried on top of it.

What would you do about that? Anything?

Edit: Offer to split it with the land owners, and call the excavators? (and the bomb squad?)

I have an uncle that is one of those "gold guys" who thinks economic collapse is around the corner (shrug; who knows he may end up being right someday). He says he has buried $500K in gold on his 200 acre place and says he is the only one that knows where it is. I have told my Dad (it's his brother) we should go out there at night with a metal locator. I sent the link to both of them :)

Can we do airborne ground-penetrating radar yet?

> The Danielson brothers’ claim to possession of buried treasure was also echoed in a 2013 case, when a couple walking their dog found $10 million in gold coins buried on their property in rural Northern California.

Anyone know more about this case? Who brought the suit if they found the money on their own property? Was it the government so that they could get the tax money?

See here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

It's got an official website:

http://saddleridgehoard.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_Ridge_Hoard

I think the blag might be using "case" to mean "incident" there rather than referring to a lawsuit.

In france, I think if it's above 1m, it's yours, if it's below, it belong to the state.

That sounds backwards?

That broach (or just rubbish?) I found that's probably worthless I have to hand over. The priceless historical/cultural artifact? The state isn't interested.

The only benefit I can see is encouraging people to declare larger finds, rather than splitting them up.

m probably means meter here. It sounds like you are reading it as million.

But it is a great example of why using abbreviations is almost always a bad idea on the Internet. It saves the one author a few tenths of a second but wastes time for thousands of readers when ambiguity strikes.

Yep. I forgot NH is mostly american, and they don't use the metric system. 1m in Europe would obviously be one metter, but 1M one million, and 1min one minute.

I'll avoid saving a few keystrokes next time, it's not worth it.

Ok thanks, I'm British for what its worth (so we have metres and miles!).

So if something is found buried deeper than a metre it belongs to the state? That makes some sense.

Yes, if I recall well, it's not even about treasures, it's just that above 1m, the land is private, and below, it's public.

Does this mean you are not allowed to construct underground floors at all?

You can, so I assume it's part of the permit you request from the city concil.

How do mineral rights work in France then?

All I can say is that this article is making me wonder how many times I buried something as a kid and forgot about it.

I definitely remember burying a few things, but not all of them I can recall.

IMO : If it's on private property, whoever owns the property. If it's on public property then the government.

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