The location and surroundings of the artefact are a key part of what makes it interesting.

Consider: a painting restorer would be happy with a discovery of an old painting, and will eventually be scraping and polishing and removing layers from it to reveal the full picture hidden under the dirt and rot of the ages (carefully, a tiny bit at a time, after they've recorded what they're starting with, and recording everything as they go).

But if you just scrape random flakes of paint off yourself and send them over with no other information, they will be mostly sad and hardly happy at all. The paint is important! - without the paint, the painting is nothing; but the flakes of paint are not in themselves valuable.

The location and surroundings will still be there, just as they've been for centuries. They can be investigated and dug by archeologists. There is a much higher risk that interesting archaeological sites get disturbed by construction, farming, and nature herself, such as floods and tree roots.

A metal detectorists do not like unnecessary digging, so you can be sure that they will retrieve their objects of interest with the minimum upheaval necessary.

I liked your analogy very much!

By "the location and surroundings" I don't just mean the farmstead or whatever. I mean things like the cubic centimeters of dirt immediately around, above and just below the object, recorded in meticulous detail. You know, all the stuff you've just dug through to get to it. People elsewhere are complaining about how long digs take, but have you ever seen an archaeologist's toolset? They "dig" sometimes with a sharp flat trowel but mostly with a tiny little paintbrush. The "dig carefully" of a hobbyist spending a fun couple of hours on a Sunday with their metal detector and shovel is not the "dig carefully" of an archaeologist with their six-month grant, tiny trowel, ruler, calipers, camera and 1/4" sieve for the dirt.