Shredded
Author: wintersen
Detecting – Permission Granted?
The tenant farmer may have said that you can search the land, but do you have the permission of the landowner?
The recent spate of stories where people entering the hobby having bought a relatively simple machine, exploring near a path or in woods and finding ‘treasure’ is on the increase.
In most cases to which I refer, the ‘newbie’ didn’t have the necessary permission to search. In mitigation, they said they were unaware that it was even necessary. As well as being against the law, the practice can also be rather dangerous.
A couple of yearsago I read that a man using a detector received for Christmas had unearthed a World War II bomb. He commented that it was really the first time he had used the machine and although the bomb was a ‘nice’ find, he would have preferred a big pot of gold. The guy was detecting on a path in a nature reserve!
He said, “I wasn’t sure what it was to start with, so I started digging down with a spade and flicked it out of the ground and onto the ground and onto the grass.” Just before that he had found a few coins in a children’s playground.
Continue reading “Detecting – Permission Granted?”Baffling Disk
In November 2007 on an American forum, an English detectorist reported that he had found a ‘round brass tag’ on a beach. He said the object had a hole on the top ‘to hang it from something’, with the words COSMOS LINE on one side and AFTER USE RE-COIL CLOCKWISE on the other. The disk baffled him, and he looked for an identification. The picture below shows what he found.
Americans scoured Mr. Google and there were several possible leads, but all incorrect. There was one long and involved explanation saying – basically – that COSMOS was a shipping line (beach connection?) and the artefact sounded like a fire hose reel tag. The original poster welcomed the explanation and thought that the item could be from a shipwreck. Not a bad explanation and conclusion, but incorrect.
Other attempts at identification were rather more fanciful.’Numista’ who should know better, said that the scope of the product was unknown and it was a ‘miscellaneous’ token definitely used on the Cosmos Line ships. Wrong on both counts, I reckon. Cosmos Shipping Ltd was established in 1993 and now has a world leading container fleet. This artefact looks older. ‘World of Coins’ said . . . doubt the item has anything to do with the shipping line of this name. Perhaps fishing line. We’re getting there!
Continue reading “Baffling Disk”For Detectorists Who Just Whine on … and on … and on
A couple of things were the catalyst for this blog post. The first was from a friend of mine bemoaning the fact that whenever he visited detecting sites, it seemed to be the same ‘hard core group’ keeping the forum active – and that’s true. I have often seen that Administrators urge people to contribute more.
The other, from the mouth of a serial whiner was a terse, “There are too many bloody blogs.”
Nice alliteration!
Self Doubts
I pointed out that the core group on any forum were usually the retired, the unemployed and those with time on their hands – for whatever reason. Other, younger detectorists, are busy working, earning a crust, raising a family, and coping with a myriad of other tasks, including getting on with their lives. They don’t have the same luxury as us wrinklies … and that ‘commodity’ is TIME. And, although I try to keep myself busy, I’ve still got a surplus of that! One thing I do with this bonus is maintain my blog – about the ONLY thing I can do. I enjoy writing about and keeping up with the hobby and, I suppose, that has always been the point.
December 2010 was my rather hesitant foray into the blogosphere and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing there – apart from giving me that purpose in life. In the early days I talked with Dick Stout about why we kept a blog. He summed it up admirably in a well-written blog …
“I’ve often thought that blogging was a self-centred way to promote yourself, but I find it creative and fun, in that I try to pass on things about the metal detecting pastime that I’ve learned over the years, and in the process, try to get a laugh or two out of my subscribers.” Dick.
Along with many of you who leave the occasional response on my blog, Dick has kept me going in periods of self-doubt and I thank him, but perhaps I owe more to Bacchus, the Roman god of the grape harvest … or should that be the Greek god Dionysus? In Greek mythology, in addition to being the god of wine, he was also a champion of ritual madness! Yup! He’s more my kind of guy.
>>> Statue of Dionysus. Marble, 2nd century – found in Italy. Unknown artist.
