Metal detecting: laundering by find spot falsification? How come you haven’t heard about that?

Detectorists reckon the authorities know if reported find spots are false:  “If reported and not found legally then they’d find out pretty fast as they require landowner details and a grid reference of the findspot…”  It’s not true. PAS’s database is wide open to falsification and laundering by findspot description and the incentives to do it are massive. If the item has been nighthawked or if there’s less obligation to share with Farmer B than Farmer A you just change a letter or two.

Thus a find from Jarrow is suddenly found at Harrow. Job done. A farmer in Jarrow has been stolen from and the PAS database has been falsified. God bless rallies, eh?

And yet, Dear Reader, in Bonkers Britain neither detectorists nor PAS nor the police nor the CBA nor EH nor Glasgow’s Trafficking Culture project nor the Alliance to Reduce Crime against Heritage say a single word about this danger to farmers or the taxpaying, stakeholding public. It’s to be hoped the impending reforms will at least make rallies a thing of the past.

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More Heritage Journal views on artefact collecting
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