The Righteous Seeker

"Buffet" the pie-gobbling middle class metal detectorist tries to set himself up above the others of that ilk, he claims:

I don't collect items, I find them and record, bag and tag the items and give them to the landowner as part of the history of their home and surroundings. The enjoyment of sitting down with someone and explaining the age of a buckle, the usage of a strap end or the value of a coin is as exciting and interesting as
making the actual find.

This is an interesting perspective. Instead of launching the detector-typical cheap personal attacks and name-calling (“Barfordisation”), he might like to contribute something concrete to the debate by using his blog to tell us what he thinks of the other type of metal detectorists. The ones who actually do collect the portable antiquities they find, those who do not “tag” them and “record” them, and those do not give them all to the landowner. Many of them sell some of them on eBay (though we do not know in how many of those cases the profits are split with the landowner). So for example we have the wonderful Mike Pegg video “metal detecting down to Earth” of which a small extract can be found on YouTube. I made a blog post about it a few weeks back. In this video, Mr Pegg is enjoying sitting down and explaining the age of a buckle and strapend, though I cannot see any “tags” on his finds in a heap on the table, some of which have broken out with bronze disease. Maybe the anonymous blogging non-collecting "metal detectorist” could tell us all his thoughts on the ethics of this kind of metal detector use and collecting. I guess "Buffet" must feel the same distaste as me when he sees all those detector finds on eBay, as they quite clearly belie the deception that these individuals are only interested in it (“detecting”) “out of a passionate interest in history”. Not all of them are, and I am sure we'd all like to hear “Buffet's” views on those others.
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