Hoxne Hoard | Hacker News Reader

Hoxne Hoard

en.wikipedia.org

67 pointsdiodorus32 comments

In the UK, finders of treasures such as this are legally required to hand it over to the government - but are then compensated at full market value. A happy case of aligning monetary incentives and civic goodwill! In the US the law is complicated, but often "finders keepers."

I'm skeptical of "full market value" for unique items for which there is no public market.

There’s a committee[0] and I guess Roman coins are one of the easier artifacts to value as there actually are public markets for them[1].

If you, as a finder, disagree with the valuation, you can “send your own valuation for the committee to consider”, which sounds like an interesting process to navigate. I imagine you’d have to find a credible alternative buyer who’d be willing to pay a higher amount.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/treasure-valuati...

[1] https://www.vcoins.com/en/coins/ancient/roman-coins-2.aspx?c...

The article lists several unique items which are not coins, including one unique enough to have its own wikipedia page in 6 languages.

Pretty much by definition, its "full market value" cannot be determined by a committee.

One of the cases a societies right of access to culture heritage trumps an individuals right of pursuit of monetary gain.

Yes, I am open to the possibility that confiscation by the state (with compensation) in the interest of national heritage may be the right thing to do in such cases, I'm just, as I said, skeptical of the claim that "full market value" for completely unique things that have never been on the market can be determined by a committee; and that interests of the farmer and the interests of the government are as blissfully aligned as was claimed.

This is a fair comment - price calculation is one of the main services the free market provides and I am also skeptical that a committee can perform that service to the same standard.

Shoutout to The Detectorists[1] - my vote for the sweetest show on television, largely centered around the concept of nerds with an obscure hobby dreaming of finding something like the Hoxne Hoard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists

Second this. Absolutely fantastic show, with a great theme song.

> In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £3.79 million in 2021)

Is this referring to how valuable the money would have been back then, the current day value of the metals, or the current day historical value of the items?

The current day value of them as ancient artifacts. It was 7.7 lb of gold and 52.4 lb of silver, which would be worth ~£190,000 for the metal itself.

Probably the second. The first would be a very sketchy calculation (although the Bank of England claims to calculate inflation back to the 12-13th century).

In 1283 London you could buy a Big Mac for a shilling and a twopence, so it's not that hard to calculate.

Reading this today got me started reading about other historical finds for about an hour. The last I read before heading out for the day was the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

I've been asking myself all day, what beautiful treasures would I like to be buried with?

I don't really own much that is not throw away junk.

Lovely song with lyrics about this discovery https://youtu.be/FV-kiCEYKtU

> is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain

thought this was a new ubuntu release

I’m just glad the farmer found his hammer. Way more valuable on the farm.

The hammer was also sent to the museum, as is british custom.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1994-0408-...

I really love that the british museum have an entire page dedicated to that hammer :D

This is about the fourth time I have thought about the Roman Empire today!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-roman-empire-tiktok-trend-w...

Classic clickbait title. This is barely a treasure cache, let alone a hoard!

edit because I'm getting downvotes: this was meant as a joke, reading "hoard" made me expect a mountain of jewels but clearly this is not clickbait and hoard has a definition outside of dragonic treasure context

In the end, he didn't even get his hammer back. Outrageous.

>In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £3.79 million in 2021).

Reminder that a Roman likely experienced almost no inflation in their lifetime until the Empire started falling apart. Their bread cost the same when they were born and died. Someone living in 1993, experienced their money losing value 2.16X in 28 years. Is this nuts to anyone else?

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/32182/how-import...

The question you're posing cites "historian-philosopher" Stephen Molyneux's podcast. I once tried listening to a bit of that, but it was beyond ridiculous. One of the things he posited was a major cause of the fall of the Roman Empire was the loose morals of women, for which his main source was Cicero. Cicero, who died before the Roman Empire even existed.

So I would take anything else they claim with a major pinch of salt, even if they also cite some real sources.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, considering the link you provided has a chart showing the progressive debasement of roman currency, but they definitely had inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#Ec...

huh? emperors regularly debased the currency; that’s inflation by another name. same effect

No, no it's not. It's not hard to understand why the emperor minting a 40% gold aureus isn't going to reduce the value of my hoard of 80% gold aurei.

On the other hand, a fiat currency issuer doubling the money supply can (not necessarily will![1]) indeed reduce the value of any fiat I hold.

And incidentally coin debasement in the late Empire was largely due to the empire's economy and thus need for currency growing and exceeding the available supply of precious metals. If only they'd had double-entry bookkeeping...

[1] This is because money can't cause inflation, ie drive up prices, unless it's actually used to bid them up.

the debasement was specifically so they could “print their way out of debt” — the effect is the same as with a fiat currency, “more dollars chasing the same quantity of goods” is a somewhat canonical definition of inflation and applies in both situations.

I’m afraid you’re being intentionally obtuse. I already gave one example of how debasing coinage is a different operation than issuing more IOUs, with considerably different consequences for participants in the respective systems, and your only response is a libertarian platitude about printing money and a statement about fiat that isn't particularly germane.

There has been a historical case of actual monetary inflation in a commodity based currency system and that was in Spain. The treasure fleets brought back so much gold that there really was too much money chasing too few goods and services. It should be obvious that that kind of inflation is operationally a very different thing than currency debasement and much closer to issuing new fiat.

Sorry I’m not going to argue basic economics. If that’s too obtuse that tells me all I need to know. Good luck.

It is to me. I view fiat currency the same I view those tickets that come out of a skee-ball machine at the arcade. It is someone else's game that I am playing. The only difference is I am trying to feed my family here not buy a cheap toy so the stakes are bit higher.

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