Ancient Indian Coin?

[roastedtoe]

It's a matter of principle and respect.  The Thames is one big major archaeological site and to be allowed to go at your own leisure to fossick about and remove antiquities is a nice privilege.  Some people do it purely for personal profit and deny the public the knowledge of their finds.  Others get a license and do it legally and agree to show the Museum anything of interest they find as a thank you and a nod to the happy laxity of the law governing the site.  This is a good compromise because you couldn't possibly hope to police the entire foreshore.  Also, it allows you access to the resources and knowledge of the museum for free (which is only fair of course, given it's a public institution) and you get your artefacts returned with a nice write up from the museum on each one they record.

This is a good way of course for the museum to know what's coming out of the river.  It works and I appreciate it and the first people who are going to see any mysterious artefact I find are at the museum.

As to who has the better experts? Good luck to you.  Debate that one on your own.

As to the treasure act.  A single copper coin doesn't come under that.  It's gold and silver, 10% or more by volume and over 300 years of age, that the treasure act covers, as a rule.  Unless you're talking about great big pots of copper coins of course.  This coin/artefact doesn't come under the treasure act, but that's not what we're debating.

Old Man I would ask you please for a final time to leave it be on the cleaning issue.  It's been discussed, I genuinely appreciate your proposals but at this stage I just don't agree with you.  I would like to get on with the discussion without having to debate this endlessly.

Patience and the right pair of eyes will see the artefact and identification achieved.  Or, the accumulated minds of this website will ask enough questions to crack the riddle.  This one will just take a little time, clearly, but as it's potentially been laying in the Thames for 2000 years till recently, a bit more time won't hurt.

[akona20]

I'll leave it alone of course at your request. You are welcomed here and given the best of advice you choose not to take it.

However in perspective you are the second metal detectorist from the UK to come to this site in the space of a few eeks and both times for correct identification coins needed either better photography or to be correctly cleaned for proper attribution.

Now if you choose not to do that then okay but pleae don't suggest the group is incapable of correct attribution of a piece presented correctly. You know how the great digs and museums attribute coins that are dirty? Well I do I have part of enough research groups in enough places. They clean the bloody things. And frequently they do the job poorly. Most of us here understand sites of interest and what they hold, or don't hold for that matter.

Check out the sanctioned program Time Team. One minute you see a dirty mess that is a coin and hey presto the attributal article turns up. It's cleaned of course.

[Figleaf]

Some people make their own treasures along the Thames banks. These would be good metal detecting site once they have left.

Peter

[roastedtoe]

When up in central London I sometimes start on that spot to get my ear in for the day...plucking spare change out of a mass of bottle caps and ring pulls and pieces of aluminium cans warms you up for attempting to find much more exciting things in the morass of rusting iron that is a lot of the foreshore once you scratch the surface. Lol

[Figleaf]

Not bad ar all, if you can actually separate ring pulls and bottle caps from coins by sound. What kind of detector are you using?

I never worked out how to get down there, or up again, for that matter. Not that I had the intention...

Peter

[roastedtoe]

The Thames takes a lot of patience alloyed to persistence bordering on mania, lol, but your first roman or Celtic find is both reward and fuel forever   As to discriminating the sounds? It's just experience, you learn it subconsciously by immersing yourself in the digital chatter and digging and digging anything that isn't iron.  My machine is a Minelab xterra305. Pretty basic machine but it has good discrimination between iron and other metals and that's the most important thing on the river.