Dealers and stolen coins.

No, it is not that. I have worked in industries that not fast and loose with business ethics. You got the answer. You don't buy coins that are supposedly inherited unless you have the paper work that proves it, especially for a substantial amount of money. In civil law, the concept is preponderance of evidence. If you are looking at $100,000 in coins, or even 20K, what is the rush? It can wait until the circumsances of the ownership of the coins is clear.

In the future, if eveyone was serious about this, you could simple use your cellphone to take a picture of the coins and determine at minum the previous ownership of most coins, and if they had been reports stolen or authorized by the owner for sale.

 

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You have to understand that in the future, this will happen whether you like it or not. The government is going to get sick of tax evasion, and the arts and archaeologist community are getting sick of plunder. The real choice is that either the industry get on board and get serious about ethics, or eventually the IRS and the FTC will do it for you and I guarantee you it will not turn out well then.

 

No they don't. Please...
This shouldn't even need any evidence... but just for fun...

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/pawn-stars-pawn-shop-melted-stolen-coins/story?id=22851656

 

Dude, are you kidding me? Something like AGE and common St Gaudens exist in the tens of millions. NO, they do not all have enough difference to distinguish them. How in existence, unless you are going to require chips installed in all coins, there will NEVER be a way to PROVE ownership history, etc for all coins. Its a pipe dream, and to be honest i do not WANT IT. Most people who like coins are also into privacy. One attraction to PM coins is financial privacy.

I personally take offense to characterizing dealers in this hobby so shabbily. Again, almost never do they KNOW anything is stolen. Maybe people should do a better job of protecting valuables and this problem would go away as well. Maybe everyone should support the police more and get them fully staffed. Right now they are having a hard enough time stopping murders and shooting rather than someone who lost their coins.

 

Definitely not NYPD

 

For todays computing power that is a small sample and your just not right. Each coin has unique marking that AI can identify, even to the 100's of billions.

Even a hand held cellphones with a snapdragon 888 does 26 TOPS performance, with is about 11 TRILLION calculations per second. Servers with CUDA GPUs can munch this out without even noticing and in microseconds with properly trained AI.

 

I already told you... if you don't know, don't buy. Problem solved.

 

What State are you from? I am sure your State already has statutes on the books targeting scrap metal theft, specifically non-ferrous metals such as copper. The laws addressing scrap metal theft in my state are generally written and while not currently enforced upon coin dealers the statute does not specifically exclude them. By law we are required to obtain a copy of the seller's ID, Take a date stamped picture of the seller, obtain a thumbprint of the seller, take date stamped pictures of the scrap being purchased, obtain a signed statement from the seller they are the legal owner of the property being sold container information concerning from who they obtained the scrap and the location from where the scrap was obtained. This along with the compensation paid and full description of the property purchased must be up-loaded at days end to leadsonline.

 

too bad we don't have that for pawn shops...and no sunset of liability.

 

My point is the scrap metal law in my State has a very general definition for scrap metal dealer. General enough that, in my opinion, the definition of scrap dealer also includes coin dealers as well as cash for gold and other such enterprises.

 

Just my opinion, you report your items as being stolen.
pawn shops and coin shops that buy things from people pretty much know it going into it there's going to be a percentage of fake or stolen that gets through over the course of a year, it's all factored in (or at least should be) in their buy and selling prices.

I dunno. Anytime, you have a business buying stuff from other people, or selling for the matter really, you are gonna get scammed at some point somehow the only way to avoid it is to watch out for the scammers and be cautious.

In florida, the pawnbroker owns the piece of property, he get a reciept for it from police. If you want ti returned to you, you ahve to go to court to prove you are the legal owner of the property and that it was stolen from you and make claim of it.

Florida courts have ruled that law enforcement may not recover stolen property from pawn shops and return it to a victim of a crime without providing the broker the opportunity for a hearing.

oddly enough in Florida (where I am):
If you are a victim of a theft and your property has been located in a pawnshop, you may decide to buy it from the pawnbroker, or go to court and have it ordered returned to you.
In order to obtain a court order, you will need to file a petition for return of property.

• To obtain possession of stolen property held by a pawnbroker, the victim must notify the broker by certified mail, return receipt requested, or in person, evidenced by a signed notice.
• The notice must contain a complete and accurate description of the property and must be accompanied by a legible copy of the law enforcement agency’s report of the theft.
• If the victim and the pawnbroker do not resolve the matter within 10 days after the pawnbroker’s receipt of the notice, the victim may petition the court to order the return of the property, naming the pawnbroker as a defendant.
• The pawnbroker is required to hold the property until the right to possession is resolved by the parties or by the court.

A lot of times, the victim negotiates with the pawnshop a price for return of the item and it doesn't get to court.

 

I still insist, 4,987 angels can dance on the head of a pin!

 

By all means. I didn't mean to take away from your point.

 

i once bought some coins off of a kid about 40 years ago, and i was a kid myself, and they were common barber dimes so did not raise a red flag, heck, i was dealing at age 10, so if someone near my age had some coins it seemed normal, they were not rare by any means, his father (another dealer at the flea market) came over and told me his son stole them from him, si i had to give them back, the kid spent all the money so i was s o l, not reimbursed..lesson learned..

 

Sounds like a father and son team grift to me. Should have threatened to have his kid arrested if you don't get compensated for the stolen property he sold you.
the way you describe it he got his coins, the kid got your money, and everyone except you lived happily ever after. his family made out more than whole.

I'd also have settled for a viewing of him giving his son a major whuppin as compensation. That would of worked for me.

 

he did have his son in tow, and actually scolded me for buying from a minir, i said: "i am a minor, i am 13, lol anyways, i told the owners of the flea market, and nothing was done, he left there soon after as i told anybody i could about his antics...it happens, any transaction you make with the public has a potential to go wrong, it is part of doing business, and i learned a lesson, any time after that i asked someone (if they looked young) to bring along a parent, same as when i sold knives or girly books, lol

 

You sold "Girly Books" ? Oh my, now that could get you in trouble, especially at age 13. Parents let you sell "Girly Books" (and knives) to their underage kids ?

Now that explains a lot !!