Ancient coins intercepted in Chicago returned to Greece.

Here we go again!

 

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but, but, but, they came from Morocco...

 

Stolen/pilfered I agree.
Finder's keepers though.
As long as I have permission to dig it, you can study it, as long as you know that it is mine.
Otherwise It is my choice on which market to sell it. This whole appropriations approach drives me nuts.
The way I look at it I found it.
It's mine. The best preserved examples are the ones in small time collectors hands.
My opinion your government is stealing your wealth and heritage.

 

The coins were apparently shipped from an auction house in Austria without the appropriate paperwork. In 2011, the United States entered into a 'memorandum of understanding' with Greece, restricting the import of a wide range of antiques, including coins. The current version of the memorandum is linked below.

https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...d-on-archaeological-and-ethnological-material

 

Wow, tens of thousands of dollars...Nope. someone needs a better investigator!

 

From their repeated showing of it, it appears that the Macedonian tetradrachm is the largest, best preserved, and maybe the most valuable coin.

I'd guess that it's worth maybe $300 to $400 tops. The other 20 coins may be worth much less: maybe in the $50 - $100 range apiece.

I'd be very upset, were I Macedonia, a sovereign country since 1991, and this item was shipped to Greece instead. Definitely worth going to war over.

 

What a crock of you know what. I own at least one of every coin shown, nothing "rare" at all, and nothing any Greek museum even wants. It will "end up" either sitting in the basement somewhere or back on the auction market with some Greek bureaucrat making a little bonus.

Problem with coins is; prove to me where they were found. Were they traded to someone else and found there? Who is Greece to declare they own them? Huge hoards of Roman gold coins were found in Sweden. Does Italy still think they own them? Nevermind the fact that the Roman empire covered like 28 modern world countries nowadays, or what we call "Greek" coins also cover numerous countries nowadays, most of them NOT Greece.

Stupidest newscast full of so many obvious lies its simply disgusting. Why didn't they contact HJB to actually become educated?

 

What is crazy is also that the Greek coins were widely spread out and use during the times they were struck, etc. In fact the Greek world was huge. These types of coins were not limited to being used only in Greece when they were traded, so to think they automatically need all be sent back to Greece is not logical.

 

I always said, have the coins sent via registered letter/ no description/ value.....works all the time

 

Ancient coin hoards belong to the country in which they were found, if they were found after this country passed the appropriate legislation. But I understand that if the finding location is unknown, they may be returned to the country in which they were minted.
Civilized nations MUST do something to protect historical heritage against looters and traffickers. It may not be perfect, It may remain matter of discussion, but at least something is done.

 

Interesting, but overblown.

 

Under that logic/ all the loot recovered from Spanish galleons/ struck in European Countries when under Spanish rule/ then should all be returned to Spain. Same would apply to Macedonian coins struck in Egypt/ Lebanon/ Iran/ etc./ gold/ silver which they plundered from the Persian Empire. Italy/ Greece looted/ plundered all over the place/ why should they benefit from their looting of defeated nations treasuries?

 

The hysteria around repatriation is casting a shadow over honest and legitimate collecting, and it's largely based in ignorance, and an over-inflated sense of zeal, and a desire to advertise one's own moral superiority.

The people in that video acting as if they just rescued priceless pieces of Greek culture is really laughable. And the Greek consulate playing his part in the act - as if these common coins worth maybe $2,000 all told matter at all, culturally speaking, to the Greek government - is also comedic.

Maybe the saddest part is that merely "believing them to be stolen or looted" was apparently enough to confiscate and return the coins. Any ignorant doofus in the DHS could conceivably "believe" that something was acquired illegitimately - but is there proof, or even reasonable evidence, that this was so?

And then there's the whole question of which country has the most "legitimate" claim to these coins, considering how wide-spread they are, and the fact that they were created thousands of years ago by cultures and societies no longer in existence today.

Seeing this sort of thing being hyped up by the media (international intrigue?!) is frustrating.

 

Of course they may be an everlasting discussion about the legitimacy of selling/buying ancient coins, repatriation can be discussed too... but this is an emergency. There are countries where metal detecting, unauthorized digging and looting on archaeological sites, which causes their destruction, has become an industry. Something must be done to stop it. What is done may not be perfect, but it's better than doing nothing and continue trading blood antiquities w/o asking questions, just saying "everybody should do as in UK with the magic Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme".

I remember this absolute scandal that was the auctioning in New York, two years ago, of an unique coin: an aureus of Vabalathus. It was a never seen before coin. Of course it had no origin, no provenance at all, it just fell from heaven in the Empire State Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Nobody asked any question about its provenance, questions like who could be the freaking seller? This coin minted in Antioch and still in near mint condition was obviously hoarded immediately after minting, that is to say not far from Antioch. In the Idlib sector, for example, still controlled by Syrian rebels and terrorist militias who make money selling abroad looted antiquities? Nobody asked questions, the coin was not withdrawn and it sold for USD 250,000. Nobody knows who bought it and what he or she did with it. A unique coin of high historical importance...

 

The lucky collector who won it will take way better care of it/ then some "Third World" Country Regime/ esp. Assad's Syria.

 

While I agree that unrestrained looting of important archaeological sites is not a good thing, I don't necessarily agree that it's an "emergency" - that term has been used too many times to justify all sorts of bad ideas.
I also don't think that doing "something" is automatically better than doing nothing. I'm not going to praise any country for "just doing something." It all depends what that "something" is.
And what's wrong with saying that other countries should adopt the UK's strategy, which appears to be working quite well for everyone involved? From what I've seen, it has greatly incentivized the discovery of new archaeological sites by providing a legal avenue for amateurs to profit from their finds. You seem to be arguing for a false dichotomy of either doing nothing at all, or else doing something that doesn't work very well and opens the door for targeting legitimate activity. Why not scrap both options and go with what has been shown to work best?

And anyway, the fact that an artifact has been looted doesn't mean that it now loses all historical or cultural value. You could look to the past and argue that it was a net benefit that the European colonial powers took artifacts from other countries - studying and preserving what may well have otherwise degraded and been lost under primitive regimes with no interest or ability to study them.

We can all agree that looting is generally a bad thing and should be stopped. But perhaps we could also agree that it would be better for a looted artifact to be studied and appreciated in a private collection, than for it to disappear forever in a government storage facility?

 

Completely disagree respectfully sir.

1. The modern country in most cases are invaders, they are not the same people who lived there in antiquity? Why are they more entitled to these items than all of us are?
2. Coins are NOT antiquities. Antiquities mainly are found where made. Coins were made to be traded, and were widely traded throughout the world. Therefor, why does Greece get to reclaim Coins minted there when they were legally traded to maybe someone at Cyrene, than Andalusia, and further on to Celts in the UK? These were all legal trades.
3. "Looting" implies destroying important archeological digs to find coins. Only a fool would do that. Most ancient coins are found as random lost coins or buried in a pot under a random tree somewhere. Would you hide your life savings in a public area or a private spot only you know about?

Coins are simply completely different from antiquities. I do not collect antiquities for the negative things associated with them.

 

Who said it had to be stored near where it was minted? I personally own coins from Antioch, in mint state, found buried in a pot in England by the metal detectorist. I bought it from the finder and he talked about the coins found in the pot, some others in mint state from London and Constantinople as well. Mint state has nothing to do with where buried for the most part sir. Further, why are you assuming where the gold coin was found was important archeologically? Why not in the wall of a random house, a field under a random stone, etc?

 

I'm sure many ancient coins are smuggled out of Europe everyday, this is not new.
Not to mention the thousands of coins that were smuggled decades ago and have wounded up in mass collections in the US since.