Provenance of the Uncleaned

As the issue of provenance has become increasingly important in recent years, I started to wonder where does it begin.

I love buying lots of uncleaned coins, especially what the seller describes as "culls". It's like scratching a lottery ticket that can take months or even years to reveal and identify what you "win". So let's assume that I clean a coin, eventually transforming it from a piece of metal covered in 1500 year old dirt identified only as a cull, to a desirable collector's coin, with complete legends and discernable mint. Does provenance start with me or does it start with the seller who had no way of knowing what he sold me?

If this issue has already been discussed, please point me in the right direction. I searched the forums but didn't see a thread about this particular nuance.

 

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Provenance is the demonstrable ownership history of an object, plain and simple. It is the basis of good legal title. Documentation of provenance begins where it begins. Unprovenanced and weakly provenanced coins will become more and more problematic as governments tighten the screws of cultural property law.

 

IMO, unidentified items from lots can’t be considered having a provenance, because neither the seller was able to declare what he was selling. Thus the first legal transfer regarding a specific coin is when you sell it declaring you legally acquired it.

 

Occasionally a seller of uncleaned lots will say where the lot was discovered. When that's the case, I guess the provenance would be something like Spain, 2013. But this is rare because must uncleaned coins have been smuggled illegally out of the country they were found in, so most importers won't say where they came from.

 

Provenance starts when it's first disturbed from its rest by a human noticing it-often a metal detectorist. The name of the individual is the least important,place of finding and if anything else was found in association.

 

Lots of uncleaned lots come from the Balkans, no provenance

 

One eBay seller advertises just about everything he sells as “found in the former Yugoslavia”

 

The reason I ask is probably rather obvious to those who have spent any time cleaning ancients. It becomes increasing difficult to keep track of which coins came from which lot. Logically, it can be done with copious amounts of labeling, by never combining lots and by never working on more than one lot at a time. I've tried doing this before and am trying again with my current lots, but it gets more and more difficult as the months and years go by. Dozens of lots and hundreds of coins start to overlap in time, space and a little dementia (sic) while the individual coins clean at different rates. The meticulous tracking isn't always foolproof, and the process eventually starts to become wasteful in terms of time, space and resources. Electronic records can be lost, paper labels get old, worn out and fall off, and the soaking jar to shelf space ratio can get out of balance.

I appreciate all of the conflicting and contradictory answers because they confirm what I suspected... That no one really knows for sure. I'm guessing that there isn't an "official rule" for uncleaned coins due to the unfavorable view many "experts" now hold toward the hobby, but the reality is that at least 99% of ancient coins (with the exception of gold coins which do not readily decay or bond with dirt) and probably no less than 50% of medieval coins, whether they reside in museums or private hands, whether their provenance is recent or venable, were at one time an unidentifiable, uncleaned coin. If a paper trail going all the way back to the digger was not required when "Duke Funkledorf" owned it "ca. 1789" then adding that requirement now based on the assumptions and attitudes of the current crop of "experts" seems rather arbitrary and unfair.

For the record, I'm tracking my current lots by seller and purchase date whenever possible (placing my name second in the provenance), but unfortunately, some of my "current" lots were purchased over 7 years ago and I have lost some of the records and labels from that time period. To make matters worse, I think some of the older lots that have lost their documentation have been mixed together and a few undocumented coins from those lots have been mixed into one of the older, but still documented lots.

 

Does tracking who the large, wholesaler dealer you bought something really count as provenance?

 

You make a lot of great points and ya.. it all seems so arbitrary in these cases. For uncleaned lots my guess it that it doesn't matter that much (and I say that as a collector of very low end coins, and I appreciate them all so much!). My thought is that for those coins that you are eventually moving out, the provenance would start with you. You are the first person to care for them and document them. Which is a great credit to the hobby.

But it would be super cool if it caught on with all low end collectors (like me) to start all provenances with "Duke Funkledorf, 1789"..
Like this one from an uncleaned lot...



ex-Duke Funkledorf, 1789, Clavdivs, 2020

 

Parcels of uncleaned ancient coins coming into the US from overseas may not be given much respect by sophisticated collectors but they are taken very seriously by federal authorities. Caveat emptor.

 

Yep! That's definitely a "Funkledorf". Thanks for thinking of that, it gave the wife and me quite a laugh.

 

You have no idea how much documentation I have to fix up now!!!


Provenance?

 

I did some research on this hot topic and as far as I could tell the US laws weren't changed. Can you tell me what my legal responsibilities are or point me to a site that can?

I usually try to purchase from European sources, but just to complicate things, I purchased a lot of uncleaned coins from a seller in Israel. He purchased them "12 years ago as part of an estate sale in England from the deceased former owner's son", but at first glance, the coins appear to be just common Balkan. The seller was an art dealer and knew nothing about ancient coins or of English Treasure laws and their registration process which has been in effect since 1969. This indicates one of four possibilities: they were registered in England when found but the records were lost when the owner died, they were not properly registered when found, they were found before 1969, or that my first guess is correct and they were not found in England. I won't know until if/when I start seeing some mintmarks and even that may not be conclusive.

 

That's the question in a nutshell.

 

Essentially, it all boils down to due diligence.

 

Well put.

Great idea ! I'm in!

Here's mine:



Pontos Amisos, anonymous issue ca. 130-100BC. 24,7mm, 20,52 gr.
Ex-Duke Funkledorf collection, time of The French Revolution.

 

Provenance is another symptom of Aspergers' need to collect and classify. For me I'm only interested which hoard it came from and where so maybe I and others can learn something from it. Mostly I can go back as far as ;
Ex-Duke Funkledorf collection, time of The French Revolution.

 

OOPS, dyslexia strikes again. That should be 1996. I'm surprised no one called me on it.