Bill Wyman’s love of silver and gold

So which member of the Rolling Stones do you think of when you hear the terms "spooky ancient relic" and "dug up from a shallow grave"? Yeah, us, too. But actually, it turns out Bill Wyman is the right answer. The retired Stones bassist (who just played with his band, the Rhythm Kings, at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute in London) is quite the amateur archaeologist or, as he describes himself, a "history detective," which we think means he wears a deerstalker cap, puffs on a curved pipe and randomly shouts "Elementary, my dear Jagger!"

Wyman started getting his hands dirty back in 1968 when he bought a house in Suffolk and stumbled on fragments of past cultures on the grounds. Through the years he's dug up more than 300 coins as well as his most precious find, an 18th century ring bearing the seal of John Weniave, the High Sheriff of Suffolk, who, coincidently, was a big fan of the Stones back in their Crawdaddy Club days. Anyway, Wyman has been frustrated through the years with balky (and bulky) metal detectors so he designed his own signed special edition detector, which costs 125 pounds (U.K.). In his sales pitch he says: "Metal detecting is not just for anoraks or eccentrics." Well, who can argue with that?

--Geoff Boucher