Wife and I went on a trip, here are some coins, first picture is from Heraculaneum, but most are from Athens, the Acropolis Museum is amazing.
I asked at the museum about buying the coins on display, they were not amused. In Ephesus, Turkey, I did get offered some 'ancients' that the seller had dug down 20 meters to find. He was asking for the very reasonable $20, but lowered quickly to $15. They looked much like the $2 souvenir I bought at the Colosseum, so I passed. While I don't collect ancients, I can appreciate them, and thought I'd share.
That looks like a museum display, not some tourist kiosk. And an impressive array at that. Those aureii... all that Byzantine gold... I'd love to see Herculaneum, Pompeii, Athens. All that stuff. The only part of the Old World I've ever visited that had an ancient history in the Western sense was the UK, and where I was in Essex, the oldest thing I saw was a church that dated to the Norman period. There was plenty of ancient history there (a detecting partner right near me dug a Marcus Aurelius sestertius in the first field we visited). But not much in terms of surviving Roman ruins. And I didn't visit any museums, unfortunately. We spent all our time in muddy farm fields, detecting. But that was exciting.
Nice photos! Thank you for posting them. The archaic owl group looks especially interesting, apparently a hoard with a preponderance from what Seltman called the "Paeonian Mint".
Yes, tourist souvenirs abound. Even if the coins were genuine, taking them out of Turkey can be difficult. Then there's US Customs, if you're entering the United States. Basically, it is much more difficult to bring ancients and other coins into the US, especially from countries such as Italy, Greece, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, to name a few. A letter of form allowing the export of a coin from the origin country is the best guarantee of not being hassled or the coin being confiscated, but such a letter is nearly impossible to obtain, and even if it was possible the amount of time would stretch into weeks, even months. This is a real challenge now.
Yeah I would second that; be very careful, or even better, dont bring ancient coins out of Italy/Greece/Turkey etc. You might spend some time at customs, if they find them. Or worse... And besides, when offered to tourists, these coins will be fake.
A funny little story here about an incident at an airport in a Mediterranean country some years ago. I purchased an object at a local emporium, what looked like an ancient gladius sword. The sale was completed with the expected haggling over the price, and my payment in a combination of travelers checks and local currency. I was assured that it had been "discovered" at a local site and was clearly an authentic antique. He also assured me he could make its exportation legal. The sword did indeed look nice, though the metal screamed, "not that old" and the price was right. Sure enough a guy in some kind of blue uniform shows up, produces a printed official looking document with blank spaces to be filled in which he did. He then took a red ink stamp and plastered several stampings on it and I walked away with an impressive gladiator's sword and even more impressive legal exportation papers, though they were in a language I couldn't understand a word of. Now at the airport. I had been instructed to present the sword, wrapped in brown paper, and the export papers when I hit the security area along with my passport. Sure enough a number of people gathered around the gate, examined the sword and the papers and waved me through, proudly holding the barely wrapped sword. One last gate, the security check. Nobody seemed to care about the sword with the 20 inch blade I was carrying in my hand. They found in my trousers a pocketknife, one of those army type penknives with a two inch blade and an assortment of tools on it. , That was a problem and they took it from me, but not the sword. I was not about to start an argument so I said good bye to the pocket knife. When we landed as I exited the aircraft a steward from the cockpit stopped me and said, "I believe this is yours" and handed back the pocketknife. Moral of the story? Beats me.
In the 70s I have been visiting natural wildlife reserves in Kenya and Tanzania. In a lodge in the wild I bought myself as a souvenir an old spear (the kind with a very long hand-forged iron blade), they assured it had been confiscated from poachers who killed a rhino with it. I bought the spear and carried it with me until I reached the airport for my home flight. At the airport, police told me I could not go in the plane with this, took it from me and assured I would get it back after landing. But when I arrived and took back my luggage, no spear. I filled a lost luggage form and went home. A few days later somebody from the airline company rang my doorbell, carrying for me a whole bunch of Masai spears like mine, I remember they were at least a dozen. I searched the bunch, recognized my spear and told the guy that the others were not mine. He was really annoyed, asking me as a favor to take the whole lot because nobody know who were the owners of the other spears, officially they were all mine. I stood firm and accepted only my spear, I don't know what the guy did with the other ones. Today I don't regret this. The only thing I regret is that it was a spear. If it had been an ancient coin I think I would have accepted the whole collection...
I did buy 9 Cuban pesos from 1916 - 1953, so pre-embargo, and demonitized, but I was worried about bringing them in. But since value was less than $600 I didn't declare them, and they didn't look in carry on bag they were located in. Kind of like driving home from Canada, when crossing the border the customs agent was more interested in my Dolphins shirt (heavy Bills area, main rival), and giving me grief than the 'some cases of wine' we're bringing back. Even France, when we brought 9 bottles of wine home, the duty would have been $2.50 total if memory serves and they just don't want to hassle with that. I suspect if you are disrespectful, match some profile, or are obviously commercial, you would have to worry, otherwise too much volume.
It is less a problem for Europeans. Italy and Greece are members of the Schengen Area that covers the whole European Union plus Switzerland (but except Cyprus, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania). Inside the Schengen Area there are usually no longer any border controls. You can buy from an ancient coins dealer in Rome and bring your purchase back to Belgium, for example, with no problem.
