It is a good way of raising cash for continued work on the monument. In a similar fashion the massive nail hoard from Inchtuthil was sold to help finance further excavations back in the 1960's and they continue to be sold off today. My "Roman Nails From Inchtuthil" collection holds a pride of place on top of a bookcase in my living room. It was 1960 and Ian Richmond had just unearthed 900,000 nails weighing an astonishing 10 tons under the floor of a workshop at the Roman Legionary Fortress a few miles South of Dunkeld in Perthshire. The Scottish Museum of Antiquities simply didn't know what to do with them. Every museum in the world was sent a set of nails. The remaining (over 9 and a half tons) were sorted. graded and sold by Colville's Iron and Steelworks in Motherwell. They sold sets of nails (you could buy 5 varying lengths of Roman Nails in a wooden box for £1.25 or a single big nail for a half crown) and smelted much of the rest as raw Iron. Some were melted down and made into sinks, car parts and tools. The last big batch of a hundred thousand or so were sold off by the Dept of Culture Media and Sport in the early 1990's to an American dealer who continues to sell them on eBay as "Crucifiction Nails from the time of Christ".
 Reply | with quote | Posted by Howburn Digger
7th November 2021ce
23:42 |
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Head To Head 
Wanna buy a piece of a monument? (nigelswift)