New quarantine hobbies have unearthed new passions, some bringing with them a literal silver lining.

This year, backyard archaeologists in the United Kingdom have recorded discoveries of more than 47,000 objects, the British Museum announced this week.

Regular people found the vast majority of the historical artifacts by traversing the countryside with metal detectors, before adding or updating records through the museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The British Museum said the program also saw an uptick in people updating digital records of antiquities while the country was under a full lockdown between March 22 and May 13.

That database contains records of more than 1.5 million objects discovered since 1998 by the general public rather than by professional archaeologists.

The UK’s Treasure Act of 1996 requires that finders report each discovery more than 300 years old to the local coroner in the area in which they found it.

If the local authority defines the object as treasure, then it takes the find to the British Museum to be valued. The government then pays a fair market price to the discoverer.

The law is intended to allow national or local museums to ultimately acquire the historic treasures so that the overall public can benefit.