I promised myself I wouldn’t post about our friends across the pond and their mega-finds for awhile, but the story of bus driver Tom Peirce was just too good to resist sharing.
Amateur treasure hunter and self-confessed “metal detector fanatic” was combing a field he had stumbled upon after taking a group of school kids out for a day at a farm near Swanage, Dorset. After asking the farmer/land-owner for permission to search the two-acre field, Peirce returned with his friend Les Keith and within a few minutes his metal detector started sounding off.
Buried 10 inches under the farm land was a partial axe head. Digging even deeper revealed even more. Over the next two days Peirce and Keith uncovered nearly 500 bronze age artifacts, each one over 3,000 years old and one of the biggest hoards found in Britain!
In total, the loot is worth over 80,000 pounds (over $150,000.00), and the 60 year old bus driver will be splitting the proceeds with the farmer/land-owner, Alfie O’Connell.
What really drew me to share this story was Peirce’s quote “You do it as a hobby - you don’t do it for the money but if you strike it lucky then so be it” - and that is so true. This is a hobby; it’s fun, invigorating, exciting. It give history buff’s an excuse to research another time and era. It gives environmentalists an excuse to clean up the earth. It gives the rest of us something to do! Getting rich is just a bonus.
Happy hunting everyone! Spring is on the way!
- Elizabeth
Check out the full story at www.DailyMail.co.uk.
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