Viewing ancient coin collectors as criminals!

My conscience is clear, I own a lot of looted material. Better in my collection then some museum. I take way better care of my coins, and have more precise data. My coins are for "eyes only" to keep them in the same state of preservation as when I won them at various auctions. The same crowd that wants to curtail coin collectors ruined the butterfly hobby with CITES/ import restrictions laws.
John

 

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I agree. Being realistic, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of the millions of ancient coins in private hands and on the market -- whether they've been in private hands for 2 months, 2 years, or 200 years -- are already completely divorced from any information on the context in which they were found. Not the country, and not the location within that country. As such, they are of minimal archaeological importance (never mind the alleged importance of the cultural heritage they supposedly represent). They have value only as individual objets d'art and for whatever can be learned from them as individual objects and/or by comparing them to other coins of the same or similar type. Furthermore, they're almost certainly more available for such study if they're in private hands, and photos are circulated on the Internet -- whether by dealers, in auction catalogs, or on sites like this one when displayed by the collectors who purchase them -- than if they're put in storage and largely ignored thereafter, as would happen if they ended up in all but a handful of museum collections.

I know that there's an argument that prohibiting or severely restricting the international trade in ancient coins (and antiquities, although the issues are somewhat different given, among other things, the sheer volume of ancient coins on the market), would serve as a deterrent to looting and smuggling. Not that anything like such a prohibition is likely ever to come to pass, but if it did, then what would one do with the millions of coins already on the market, with their archaeological context already lost? Pretend that they don't exist? Lock them away? Melt them all down? Refuse to allow their study, as some archaeologists and academics would prefer? I decline to believe that the (dubious) potential deterrent effect of such theoretical prohibitions or restrictions would be a net positive when weighed against the loss of information that would result from imposing them. Even simply requiring proof of a long provenance would have a similarly negative effect, I think, given that especially for common coins, it's usually impossible to establish a provenance longer than a decade or two, if any provenance at all is available. Not because such coins were necessarily looted or smuggled in recent years (or ever), but because most coins in private hands and on the market weren't ever photographed until relatively recently. And I suspect that even for those that were photographed, it will be a long time before there's any sort of single database of old auction catalogs and retail listings in which one can look up all examples of, say, a particular type of coin within a range of weights.

 

Yes, this was my thought as well. Museums already have millions more coins than they can possibly exhibit, that are probably hardly ever looked at or studied. Why do they need more?

I don't see why academia and government should have a complete monopoly on ancient coins or artifacts.

 

Probably most coins in collections where stolen/ looted after they where struck. The, English/ British where best at this, Queen Elizabeth I/ Anne when gold/ silver stocks were depleted sent Privateers/ Royal Naval units to plunder Spanish gold shipments on route from the New World to Spain. Sir Henry Morgan/ Sir Francis Drake excelled at this, and were Knighted. Napoleon's armies looted Austrian Lombardy-Venetian cities/ museums of artworks/ treasure/ lot of it now resides in the Louvre. The Hermitage has looted art/ rare coins stolen by Red Army. Spanish Republican govt. sent Spain's gold reserves/ coins/ jewels to Stalin for safe keeping in the USSR, never was returned. Even the FDR govt. in the US, under threat of prison time forced private citizens to turn over their gold coin collections to the State Private collectors today, obtain their coins thru legal means/ dealers/ auctions. We work hard to have the $$$ to purchase beautifull works of art/ coins etc./ then properly care for them/ share them with fellow collectors. The anti-collecting crowd, maybe should get a life, start a coin collection

 

Ahhh, sorry. I'm incredibly dense today and I didn't even enjoy the pleasure of day drinking. I'd read it as you'd thought I was backing the silly pompous notion that if the leg is ackeing then we should cut off the head (or heads) of us EVIL tomb robbing ancient coin collectors

How amazing would it be to have that kind of untapped knowledge at your finger tips. Can you imaging how quickly a Crack squadron of some of our ancient CTers could identify those coins, GLEEFULLY, and the amount of information humanity would gain in doing so!
All they would need is to pay for my family and my flights to Naples to enjoy my expertise.
How many decade apart were these coins minted?

 

@DonnaML , I generally agree with you but would like to reply to two of your points:

I know this argument but don't believe it holds true. In contrast to others who expressed their opinions in this thread, I consider illegal excavations a serious problem, yet I doubt that banning the trade in antiquities is an effective instrument for addressing this problem.

Compare, for example, the situation in Italy and Turkey, where such a ban is in place, to the situation in the UK, Germany, or Denmark, where the trade in antiquities as well as metal detecting are allowed within specific legal frameworks: regulations like the PAS in England apparently did more to prevent looting than the severe restrictions in Turkey and Italy. In those countries, the restrictions have simply created another profitable source of income for organized crime. Instead of establishing reasonable rules for the ancient coin market, Turkey and Italy created a black market with no rules. The vast number of recently excavated coins from these countries on the market indicates that this hasn't solved and maybe even worsened the looting issue.

Your careful wording shows your background in the legal profession, yet I would still like to emphasize the "some" in the last sentence of this quote. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with a number of museum curators, historians, and archivists, and most of them didn't take such a negative view on private collecting.

First, most of them were aware that cataloguing, researching, storing and preserving every ancient coin and old book in a public collection is simply not feasible. As it is, history departments, museums, and libraries are mostly underfinanced and understaffed. Collaborating with private collectors can ease this situation.

Secondly, curators and archivists usually know that much of the material they take care of didn't come to them directly from the source but was at some point privately owned. Many of the items in public collections only survived because of private collecting. Donations from private collections for many, especially smaller institutions are the most important way of acquiring material.

Thirdly, most academics don't think it desirable to only write for and speak to other academics. Collectors, citizen archeologists, local history enthusiasts, and similar groups constitute an important audience for academic research, and they can play a crucial role in further disseminating knowledge. In times of waning public interest in history and the humanities, this is especially important.

And yes, I also know of a few academics, mostly people working on "theory" or in some "studies"-field that is detached from primary sources, who are strongly opposed to private ownership of antiquities. Their arguments mostly derive from a general skepticism about private property and are tied to political beliefs that I do not share. This board is not the right place to discuss these positions, which are not related to ancient coins or the study of history per se.

 

I think the author of the post has good intentions, but is a victim of false assumptions:
1. He assumes that preventing people from showing off their coins (and collecting coins) will end looting. That is wrong. Instead, free and transparent trade is in fact a very potent measure against looting! Prohibition will drive collecting into illegality. This increases the price of coins and hence the potential profit margin for looters. Higher profits encourages more risk taking by the looters and more looting. Hence, looter will loot more and try to access better guarded (more significant) sites.

2. He assumes that ancient coins are best kept in museum collections.
That is also wrong. Instead, Coin collectors do academia and the wider public a great service!
First, many coin collectors (and indeed people on this forum) know more about their specific fields of collecting than any museum curator ever will. Coin trade and collectors make coins public through catalogs and many collectors do their own research, thus generating knowledge that would otherwise be lost or never uncovered.
Second, collectors have a natural love for their object of collecting. Hence, they are likely to care for their coins better (or at least as well) as museums will do.
Third, safe storage, identification and description is expensive. My coins are kept in the vaults of a central bank. If my coins were in the hands of a public museum, then tax payers would have to pay for proper storage.

 

First point/ most collectors are afraid to show off their coins/ talk about the subject/ paranoid of having theirhome ramsacked by thugs/ druggies looking to score. Most collectors want to keep their collections at home to look at and enjoy, so I cannot blame anyone for not inviting over their neighbours for a coin showing. After what happened in the US in 1933/34, most do not want their govt. to know either.

Second point/ museums also get looted. Look what happened in Iraq when the Country was in chaos. As Tejas correctly stated, private collections are much better cared for/ curated.

Common sense is so hard to find. Just copy the UK example, when you find a hoard of Celtic gold Staters, you immediately call the authorities, they send in archeologists to excavate the find properly/ then conserve (safely remove debris/ catalogue them)
Then, you will be able to...
a/ keep your share/ with landowner 50/50
b/ sell them to a museum for full retail value
c/ consign them to auction (Morten&Eden) ex.
Its a win/ win...

 

IMHO, the most tragic event I can think of during that time was the Marx Brothers leaving Paramount for MGM.

Possibly Laurel and Hardy leaving Roach studios too.

But in all seriousness, as a US citizen I have no fear talking about my collection with family and friends, or indeed neighbours.

 

I apologize in advance for moving beyond the exclusively numismatic portion of this topic but as I see it, there are folks in this world who are upset by the nagging notion that there are some people, somewhere, who somehow, are happy with their lives and not really much interested in turning their lives (and those of others)) upside down because they have some kind of need to turn every concern into a world crisis requiring immediate draconian intervention to prevent Gotterdammerung. My modest collection of Corinthian drachmai, Republican denaraii, Imperial sestertii, Byzantine folles, and assorted medieval pennies, was gathered from sources where no one has been harmed in their gathering and have served well to acquaint young students, not just with an enjoyable hobby, but to have delivered into their hands a physical link between the world of antiquity and their own. If someone is trying to sell a guilt trip, sorry, but I am not buying. And just to prove the point here are a few of my guiltless coins which make me feel great for all the good they have done while in my care.

 

In the debate of private vs. public ownership, one must also remember that things such as greed and corruption are universal phenomena.

I remember an incident from 2015, when a new and enthusiastic numismatic officer reported a major discrepancy between the official records and the actual collection of a very prominent and prestigious state museum. Apparently, the actual number of coins in the collection had “multiplied” manifold, and many “coins” were actually lumps of metal in the shape of coins. There was no sign of certain coins mentioned in the official records. Official enquiries were set up with vague deadlines and the press lost interest in the matter after a few days.

Also, in certain places even if poor people were to honestly turn in valuable coins they may have discovered during manual work, they may end up receiving a sound beating from the cops demanding to know about “the rest”. The find may thin considerably as it travelled down the “food chain” to the official record.

Then there is the issue of access for research, which museums, etc., are supposedly expected to ease. Last year I received a frantic PM from a couple of independent researchers working on a book, asking collectors if they had and could share images of certain coins they were looking for. Apparently, they had been quoted a very high access/photography fee by a couple of prominent museums from where they were hoping to source these images.

 

I also bring my coins to coin club meetings in the "show and tell" segment. But, also know many collectors who do not want to make their collections public knowledge. I am sure collectors back in 1932 under Hoover felt the same way, when govts run out of money.....they sometimes resort to draconian measures.

 

Well, here is my view in part. As alluded to above, I feel I do not "own" my ancient coins. I am preserving them for posterity to study and enjoy as I have done with the coins in my possession. They promote an interest in history and who we are no matter where we may be now.
I think the idea of cultural appropriation is possibly driven by the greed of governments and academics who believe they own ancient objects.

 

Some more food for thought:

Until recently, I collected ancient firecracker packs. I still have a few, but I sold the bulk of them to get started in ancient coins.

Well, if you think people come down on you for collecting ancient coins, firecracker packs are on a completely different level. Some years ago, the largest collection in the world was seized from a well-known collector in California and burned. Many of those packs were one-of-a-kind.

The court never bothered to fathom that these were important relics of US history and that many contained fascinating art from a bygone era. The also didn't realize that most were so old that they wouldn't pop. They never bothered to understand, but just ordered their destruction.

As a collector, I had to be careful to whom I showed my collection. I had to also be conscious on how I obtained my packs. The firecracker pack collecting world was tight-knit, and most transactions were made in person. In the end, I just decided it was better to have a collection I could show off, so I sold them. I do still have a couple one-of-a-kind packs for sentimental reasons, but I keep them with a relative who has state and federal permits for the storage and manufacture of explosives.

There will always be people who understand and don't understand things, but what's particularly frustrating these days is there's an increasing trend of people who believe their opinions are now truth, and that things outside their comfort spheres aren't just wrong; they're offensive, and what's offensive must be stricken by law.

I know this goes way beyond the trade of ancient coins and artifacts in general, but it's so frustrating that many find legislation an easier alternative to understanding the actual problem.

 

It has been a while since I posted the scenario about the disposition of items found that have historic significance. As is mentioned in the above entry, many of items that have been found are put in a drawer with a small note stating the significance of the coin or other artifact. Most museums don not have room for everything that has been found.
Some museums have set up memberships for a fee, that allows patrons to see items that the museum has. That is one of the best ways to allow patrons to see them. I don't know if this system has already been set up, but it would provide money to the museum and the patron can see some items that are not on display. I've never donated to a museum, mainly because I live in a rural area of North Carolina and museums that I would like to visit are to remote for a 74 year old man to travel to.

 

Coins were and ARE minted with the intention of circulation in commerce.

My collection is from circulation, and being held as savings for future commerce.

Molon Labe.

 

I like the ones that people forgot to use as commerce

 

Arguably, except for Night at the Opera and Day at the Races, neither team ever reached their earlier peak again. (Back when I was in high school, I was a great fan of both, along with Keaton, Chaplin, W.C. Fields, etc., and saw many of their films at MOMA and the various revival theaters that existed back then in NYC. I still have all the books I bought about them. It's difficult for me to believe that as much as all those movies seemed to me at the time, in the early 70s, to be artifacts of ancient history, most of them were more recent then than the early 70s are now!)