If I find a buried treasure chest, does it belong to me or can the goverment claim it?

You can sell it to a museum,or collectors. You'll get more money if you can show the provenance of the treasure. Who put it there, why did they put it there, etc.

There's whole damn aftermarket for this kind of stuff (though mostly trading shards of antique pottery, cavemen flint knives or individual coins and brooches - actual treasure chest is super fucking rare).
If you want to unload it quick you pretty much need a fixer that's already in the know (otherwise you're only getting fraction of the worth and/or risk exposing yourself to the authorities).
Selling it one coin at the time you can do yourself - even if the authorities come down on you the most you're risking is a fine for one coin's worth of fraud (or w/e is the legal classification of this). Once you build some contacts through the small trade you can dump off the rest in one go.

Unless you can find a way to launder the money government tax collectors are going to fuck you. You'll get Al Caponed if you actually spend it.

Money laundering is the easy part, selling the treasure is the hard

Even just evaluating the treasure will be tricky.

I won't let anyone take what's mine or my friends.

In my current game you should be more worried about Dwarven marauders who claim dominion over all buried wealth.

The historical value will almost certainly be far more than the pure mineral value

I think a more modern example would be finding an oil deposit in your propriety.

>I think a more modern example would be finding an oil deposit in your propriety.
I happen to be fairly knowledgeable about this specific situation.

Hypothetically speaking, what share of the property's mineral rights does OP own?

Iirc it really depends on the laws, but if it's on your property it's yours

OP won't even tell us where he lives so we can figure out his salvage laws.

Wasn't this casus belli for Iraq / Kuwait thing because one country was drilling sideways into deposits of the other?

Not 100% on that, I just know here in the states if you own the land it's under, it's yours. Might get a little tricky if say it's in a suburban area but if you own the property my guess is they do a split, depending on what portions are where is the percentage each party gets.

>Iirc it really depends on the laws, but if it's on your property it's yours

Incorrect, assuming United States law applies. Unless you have owned the property since the nation was founded, you probably won't have full mineral rights unless those were passed along from previous owners. Mineral rights are usually not included as part of the sale when land is purchased, and if they are included, they're usually not full rights. If you're lucky, you might have 1/16 mineral rights, but it'll probably be 1/32 at best.

France here, 50% goes to you, 50% to the owner of the you (unless you're also the owner of course).
If the treasure is of scientific or cultural value, the state can keep it up to 5 years to study it, after that he has to buy it from you at its estimated value if he wants to study it further.

>France here, 50% goes to you, 50% to the owner of the you
having a giggle

*owner of the land
time to go to bed, apparently.

>shards of pottery

Maybe I am jaded because I dig up dozens of the things but I cannot see why anybody would pay for most of this stuff.

>in your propriety
Funny user, you own the land, not what's under it.
If you're lucky enough you won't get fucked out of your land. If you're not you get some money and fuck right off.

Maybe you don't own what's under it. Deeds here go pretty far down.

Depends on the law of the land. I'm pretty sure it would be consideredd abandoned property, which is finders keepers.

Obviously there's difference between living on a junkyard and on former Roman settlement.

Not really, man. Either way all that's left is junk. We find loads of old arrowheads and the occasional old axehead here, and the museums do like to have some of them to teach the kids about the stone age, but they're worth fuck all monetarily.

Well, yes, if there are a lot of arrowheads, a single one will probably not be worth a whole lot.

You do know that historically people used a lot of pots, right? Tupperware is a recent invention.

If it's precious metals, and you don't give a shit about the study of history and just want to make a quick buck, melt that fucker down! Just sell the stuff once it's in a less identifiable bar form or whatever.

buddy, back then pottery was basically our version of plastic bottles. theres literally areas where the soil layer is shattered pottery.

You don't need to hide treasure if you got it legally, like, finding it on your land.

>Unless you have owned the property since the nation was founded, you probably won't have full mineral rights unless those were passed along from previous owners.

Ah, but my family DOES have mineral rights, since the deed is so old it's Mexican.

Usually in North America you own everything that's on your land stretching all the way down to the core of the planet. (Unless there's municipal pipes and other easements).
If you find it ok your land it's yours
Along with mineral wealth.
T. Real Estate agent and this question comes up all the time

It is unless the government decide that it wants it, then it takes your land under Eminent Domain.

>all the way down to the core of the planet.
And like, 50 feet up in the air before you have to call zoning rights or something, isn't it?

Ohh... so I could build a thermal borehole if I wanted?

You already have a thermal butthole.

unless it has documented ownership or was involved in a crime. for example if you were to find D.B. Cooper's corpse and his money on your land that shit will be seized by the FBI. If you own beach front property and some priceless Greek statues wash up or doubloons from a Spanish shipwreck, that shits going back to Europe. In the event you have claim on the find and have all the right paperwork and get to keep some you do have to pay income tax.

I am an archaeologist, I have a whole bucket of Roman pot fragments nobody needed for anything just sitting in my house. We have a room at the office that is just several thousand boxes full of generic fragments of pot nobody wants for museums.

Maybe if you lazy graverobbing assholes bothered to put together a whole pot, somebody would buy it.

>can the goverment claim it?
Only if you're a retard and tell them about it.

On an amusing tangent, in Australia, before NSW enacted a ban on coal-seam gas mining, the fine for illegally poaching someones' land for CSG was $5000.
The fine on illegally mining it was $5000.
The fine for the land owner stopping the poachers or miners? $10000 and potential jail time.

And the LNP wonders why NSW refuses to lift the ban.

In Britain, the government can claim the full amount of gold and silver uncovered and up to half the gems by weight. Anything else is yours.

That's depends on the law.
In my country you don't own not even a fraction of it, and the government will buy your house by market price(not counting whatever is under the earth) and you cannot refuse

That's rough. Where I live you at least get a cut of oil money forever