.... Purposefully disobeying the rules could be seen as another reason for them to completely outlaw the hobby. ....
Well, sure.... if dingbats go flaunting around their finds, and then , sure, someone could do as you say. But CONVERSELY the "completely outlawing the hobby" could come as a result of the scenario I've described too (where perpetual annoyances walking in with 51 yr. old coins annoy them).
So let's cut to the chase: In the entire country of Italy, how many persons are there (museum type people) would are actually aware of, or care about these things ? I mean, if the average police man or lifeguard walking by the beach sees a man with a metal detector, do you *really* think he's aware of any such 50 yr. old rule ? Probably not. And the average pedestrian (or farmer you just got permission) from, do you think they care ? Probably not. In other words, out of 1000 people in any given area of Italy, you'd probably be hard-pressed to find any of them that would get their panties in a wad over it, right ?
So to use Calif. as an example: we can hunt state of CA beaches here till we're blue in the face. No one cares. Yet ..... oddly .... if you sniff deep enough into the dry dusty minutia, you do in fact see verbiage about "cultural heritage". And if you study word definitions long enough and hard enough, you will indeed probably come to the conclusion that you can't find/keep coins over 50 yrs. old. However, you can hunt the beaches here till you're blue in the face and no one cares (yup, even in full view of rangers, etc....). So who's to be bothered? I'll tell you who: If I went to Sacramento and asked long enough and hard enough, I'd eventually find 1 or 2 purist archies on the state payroll to say "give that to me" and "you can't keep that". So guess what would happen if 1000 of us started sending in our 1962 memorial pennies from there on out ? I bet we'd single-handedly get all our state beaches put off limits.
So are we all "purposefully disobeying the rules" here in CA ? Or are we going by the "
let's be realistic" reality of life ?
Hence I wonder if the same thing applies to Italy. But by all means, if it's truly a hot-button issue with every cop (and not just 1 in a million archie) who actually cares and knows or cares, then by all means, comply.
What about private land ? (eg.: farmer's land with permission). Isn't that outside the scope of whatever it is that you're saying requires to turn in everything ? Seems that private land would be outside the scope of laws that apply to public land. That's the way it is in England afterall (that's why 99% of all British hunting occurs on private farmer's lands with permission).