How many millionnaires...............?

GMD52

Silver Member
Feb 22, 2013
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Lake Champlain, Vt.
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Been sitting here thinking, always a danger sign, and I would like all of your's input on this question.

When you search and hunt, and find a valuable sunken ship, the law of the sea,(admiralty), and International rules govern your every move. If you were to find a buried pirates cache on land , you may be able to get away with no notice.

My question is how many hunters have, in your opinion, and not naming any particular individual,( their privacy is secure here), have become secure in their lives from what they have found. I'm interested in the big picture and not any one person. Thank you for your input and thoughts in advance.
 

GMD,

Any that may have sure as heck arent going to say a word here. After one of the hurricanes in 2004 a gentlemen found hundreds of pieces of 8 on the shore.... You keep your mouth shut, you know how the IRS is....:BangHead:
 

Be careful doing that. A fellow out here was doing that with Indian artifacts and got busted. Cost him a bunch of $$$ and I believe he spent a little time in prison. Art Gerber Indian Artifacts | Conviction for selling Indian artifacts upheld - Baltimore Sun

Jeremy, I would not let stories like that "ruffle anyone's feathers" for those into detecting. Because "indian artifacts" are in a camp or category ... ALL THEIR OWN. They have laws and supposed sensitities, etc... that don't apply to anything else. For example: I heard a story where a ra-ra activist indian showed up at a small town's historical museum, and was looking at their displays. They saw an indian woven basket, and told the curator that they had to forfeit that, and "give it back to the tribe", blah blah. And then made some sort of legal stink, etc..

Contrast to coins and stuff md'rs find, that buy/sell/trade on ebay ALL THE TIME, and have no such laws about them. I mean, sure, unless you have a provenance that shows it came from an illegal place. But otherwise, a quick look at ebay, and you'll see NO SHORTAGE of people buying and selling pieces of 8's, coins, buttons, collectibles, etc...

Therefore, no, nothing about indian stuff would give cause-for-alarm to md'rs thinking of selling things. Sorry 'bout that.
 

You are absolutely right Tom, Indian artifacts are in a completely different category. I only posted a link to that article because in the first post in this thread, the OP mentioned if you found a buried pirates cache on land, that you may be able to get away with keeping it. If I were to find a large cache like that with very rare old coins, I would definitely hang low for a while and not advertise my find (by selling a lot of very rare findings and drawing attention).

As for making millions in this hobby... who knows! I bet if someone did get that "find of a lifetime", they would probably keep a low profile and not make too much noise about it. The IRS and countless other organizations with show up ready to take their "share of the loot", if not all of it.
 

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