▲ 83 points
back
52 comments
Until a few weeks ago I would not have cared to click this link, let alone read all of the article. But that has changed: I recently watched the BBC television series "Detectorists"; not everybody's cup of cake, as it is pretty slow going, but "It’s good-natured and charming, and there’s really something admirable about a series so singularly dedicated to making you feel good"
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jan/28/detectorists...
It's such a superb show.
Something I realized watching Detectorists is that there aren't many realistic adult drama shows (or American movies) these days that aren't about crime or similarly extreme subjects, or that aren't historical dramas.
Detectorists is technically a "dramedy", of course, but it's basically a realistic, truthful depiction of everyday life, with some observational humour thrown in here and there.
For some reason Hollywood has indoctrinated the world into thinking that fiction can't be true to life, because life is somehow boring.
A similar American drama that comes to mind is Lodge 49, which is absolutely fantastic. On Becoming a God in Central Florida has a similar vibe, and is also excellent.
Off the top of my head, I'm struggling to think of many other shows. Better Things, Transparent, Togetherness, Succession, Mozart in the Jungle… any other good ones?
Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing perhaps? Although I can never tell if it’s some kind of obtuse absurdist parody or sincere.
Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso is good, but it's a saccharine, deeply unrealistic fantasy bordering on self-parody. So I can't really agree with you there.
It got even more cartoony in S2, had to stop watching. S1 struck a chord that was going to be really hard to replicate.
Yeah, season two definitely wandered towards more typical high drama heroes and villains fare, unfortunately.
> a saccharine, deeply unrealistic fantasy bordering on self-parody
I personally found it to be none of those things.
Often, we experience a piece of art as being something when really much of our experience is defined by what we brought of ourselves to it.
The Detectorists is one of the best TV shows made in the past decade. I loved it. It was a tonic to the everything-must-be-about-crime-and-death shows that fill Netflix and Prime.
It depends on where you are in the world. The UK has a couple millennia of metal object to find. I'm reminded of that Bob's Burgers joke about using a metal detector only to find the metal detector discarded by the last guy who tried to find gold coins on a US beach.
Detectorists is like the TV equivalent of having a nice cuppa on a cool, late summer's morning, while looking out the window at the long, brown grass swaying gently in the breeze.
Mackenzie Crook's recent Worzel Gummidge adaptation has a similar vibe, although obviously more geared towards families.
> equivalent of having a nice cuppa on a cool, late summer's morning, while looking out the window at the long, brown grass swaying gently in the breeze
Obligatory BBC Shipping Forecast, because it seems right up this crowd's alley: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CxHa5KaMBcM
Recent: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qfvv/episodes/player
Tangentially related, time team and hugely popular archaeology program that ran in the 90's-2000's in the UK has many of their episodes legally up on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TimeTeamClassics/videos
If you want an absolute banger of an episode to evaluate, try this one...
All historical dramas are just prequals to The Detectorists.
I wonder what a future version of The Dectorists would be? Maybe "The Isotopists" that find materials with isotopes from exotic places.
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/tracking-movements-isoto...
I've been in tech too long.. my first thought is that you meant they would be finding .iso files.
This was my show during first lockdown when everything seemed strange and it's air of normality and comfort was the balm I needed. Also lovely the way it celebrates the geek and avoids the temptation to mock
Without the detectorists, I wouldn't know that University Challenge is a real-life show that I absolutely love.
Also: Did you see University Challenge last night?
I like University Challenge but it makes me feel like I'm an idiot. Or maybe it just reveals the fact that I am actually an idiot. I get 4 or 5 answers per show at most. My partner sits and answers about 20% of the questions correctly. She's far cleverer than me. But I'm better at video games so it all evens out.
I found that when I watched it a lot I got much better at it. The style of the questions needs to be learnt. There are also a bunch of writers, composers and painters that come up a lot. If in doubt guessing one of these from roughly the correct period works pretty well!
I feel the same about hacker news, to be honest.
Without the show, we wouldn't understand that a "detectorist" is a person and metal detector is the machine they use.
I imagine even at the time the coin was in use it was a significant amount of money. I imagine some poor merchant in incredible distress trying to find the coin that fell out of his pocket on the way home from the market and never succeeding.
I like to think the merchant had it hidden somewhere and died without telling anyone.
There's a sentiment in Britain that 'detectorists' are pillaging the history of England. But I'm on the side of this detectorist. He saved this piece of history from the plow. It's a win-win.
There are a small minority called 'Nighthawks' that are doing damage - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/02/theres-a-rom...
With all these stories coming out of Britain of people finding ancient gold coins, I’m surprised everyone isn’t out there searching in their own neighborhoods with metal detectors. Decent detectors are not that expensive.
You don't just need the detector though, you need the landowner's permission and the time. And the already tiny chance of finding anything of non-trivial value gets smaller if everybody else is doing it. If you think we have a lot of people finding ancient gold coins, you'll be even more amazed how many lottery winners we have!
> “It was bought by an anonymous private collector in the United Kingdom who intends to place the coin on loan to a public institution or museum.
Well that's nice. Feels like the ultimate win-win all-round. Nice that's it's not disappearing into someone's private collection, never to be seen again.
The images, attributed to the auction house, are a little funny. It seems like they cleaned it up, but perhaps the 'found in a field' story is so cute, they hope it might actually contribute value and chose to photograph it back in dirt?
There's a huge rule in coin collecting: never (aggressively) clean coins. Running it under thew tap to release it from the dirt it was contained in is probably fine, but don't break out anything abrasive or acidic.
In the US, many high-value coins are sent through professional authenticators and graders, and they will mark a coin as, say, "Mint State details, but cleaned". that "but cleaned" can knock hundreds or thousands off the sales price.
Founder of www.redlotustech.com here. We are extending our military metal detector training product (precise tracking and visualization) capability to track over larger areas in more realistic operational scenarios. Curious whether there might be an application in the “detectorist” domain. Would be happy to chat with those interested/involved in the space.
Not as an investment vehicle but as a savings vehicle: it did better than the average 800-year old bond or 800-year old company share. Numismatic premium aside; the gold maintained its value throughout war, tyranny and pestilence. It would presumably also survive a G8 summit ordering major internet providers to block port 8333.
In England 800 years ago, an ounce of gold was worth about 6 months unskilled labor.[1][2] Today, it's worth about 3.5 weeks.
In the past century, gold has underperformed U.S. equities and has not, in any case, held its value very well. It's been quite volatile, e.g. falling 30% in 2013.
The article doesn't say how much gold this coin contains, but its value is essentially 100% numismatic.
[1] https://www.thebalance.com/gold-price-history-3305646
[2] https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/medieval-prices-a...
Imagining a digital arms race where crypto transactions are hidden in images using steganography
As an American, I remain humbled by how far back England is able to trace back its history. Visiting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_London was such a highlight of a trip many years ago
America has a similarly long history, there's just been a subset of people there who've been busy trying to erase it.
Proceeds from selling it will fund his kids education - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/24/devon-detect...
Are there any folks here doing metal detecting in the Netherlands?
I've been tempted to start, since I live in a village that dates from the 1200s (but likely had Romans passing through long before) surrounded by farmland. There's bound to be something interesting buried here and there.
There is a whole site dedicated to detectorists at https://www.treasurenet.com
I wonder if he owned the land it was found in, or if some portion of the proceeds go to the landowner.
"He will split the proceeds of the find with the landowner"
Genuinely read the whole thing before commenting. Don't know how I missed that. Mea culpa!
Didn't the Roman's bring gold coins 1200 years earlier? Seems a stretch to call it one of England's earliest gold coins.
This site also claims that Roman's minted coin in the territory now known as England.
http://www.kenelks.co.uk/coins/roman/roman.htm
I think the significance of this coin to English people is that Henry III is king when the Magna Carta is negotiated and the royal domain across the channel is severed. This places the coin in a context of when what was to become modern England became identifiable.
Roman Britan is not England now is it?
Isn’t that called being a history revisionist?
The coin has a picture of King Henry III of England on it.
A coin used earlier in the Roman province of Britain, even in the same location, would have a picture of the Emperor in Rome on it.
That's what makes it "one of England's earliest gold coins". One of the earliest coins of "England as a state".