There's a sentiment in Britain that 'detectorists' are pillaging the history of England. But I'm on the side of this detectorist. He saved this piece of history from the plow. It's a win-win.
With all these stories coming out of Britain of people finding ancient gold coins, I’m surprised everyone isn’t out there searching in their own neighborhoods with metal detectors. Decent detectors are not that expensive.
You don't just need the detector though, you need the landowner's permission and the time. And the already tiny chance of finding anything of non-trivial value gets smaller if everybody else is doing it. If you think we have a lot of people finding ancient gold coins, you'll be even more amazed how many lottery winners we have!