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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;SeptimusT, post: 3771778, member: 91240&quot;]Yes, they were certainly dug and smuggled illegally and unethically, but the situation that made that happen can also be partly laid at the doorstep of the people who set up those laws in the first place. If this had been found in Britain, such a hoard could have been reported, recorded, and even archaeologically recovered in such a way as to recover the maximum amount of information while still respecting the rights of the finder or owner. There, such finds are either kept as the property of the owner, or declared treasure, in which case a museum would have the opportunity to acquire them from the owner at a price deemed fair by a board of independent antiquities experts. Unfortunately, most of the world has gone the opposite direction, and wherever these coins were found they would have likely been taken without compensation if reported to the proper authorities. That incentivizes smuggling, rather than stopping it.</p><p><br /></p><p>How much information was lost by this is difficult to gauge. It all depends on where they came from and what context they were in, which we will never know. Someone may be able to salvage some economic information from them by trying to reconstruct the hoard via auction catalogues, but it will never replace what was lost, and that should be a sad thing for anyone who cares about the past.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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