CNG Keystone 3

Simple: the hypothetical thief could have been very careful and sold all the stolen coins to multiple dealers over an extended period of time.

 

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Over the past decade, I have conducted academic research in various institutional archives in the US, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and France, and I have subsequently published the results of these endeavors in different peer-reviewed journals and other formats. Furthermore, I have, among many other classes, taught introductions to manuscript studies to undergraduates, and I have on occasion written catalogue descriptions of medieval manuscripts for three well-known university libraries. In addition, I have been part of an effort to catalogue and digitize a major numismatic collection owned by an American university comparable to Yale in size and reputation.

In all this time, I haven't met a single special collections librarian, curator, archivist, or scholar actually working in the archives who wasn't aware of the positive role that private collecting has played and is playing for the study and preservation of cultural heritage. Certainly, many academics, and I include myself here, are concerned with questions on how to best protect, for example, archeological sites from looting, how to prevent the destruction of historically significant objects, and how to ensure that scholars and the public have access to as many historical artworks and sources as possible. I would assume that these are interests and concerns shared by the great majority of private collectors, once more including myself. Though I admittedly have been vexed by the behavior of a small number of individual collectors and dealers in my academic work, this is far outweighed by the amount of fruitful cooperation between private collectors and academic researchers that I have experienced, including but not limited to generously granting access to privately owned material, insightful research published by collectors, donations and bequests to public institutions, and sharing specialized expertise.

Especially in English-speaking academia, there is a loud minority that is generally opposed to private individuals owning and collecting historical objects, including ancient coins. Often, such opinions appear to stem not from specific scholarly concerns but from rather startling political positions on private property and the role of the state as well as academic institutions vis-à-vis the general public. Secondly, these colleagues in my experience tend to take a prominent activist stance yet in many cases don't do much archival or object-oriented work themselves, meaning that they are not very familiar with the conditions and problems of research "on the ground."

 

It was curious that the backs of the trays descriptions of the reverses of the coins didn't match the fronts.

 

I have read your post 15 times trying to decipher the point you are attempting to make and still find your writing a bit hazy, however, I offer the following with respect and do not attempt to diminish your article or the content in any manner.
I am a septuagenarian who appreciates brevity.
The thrust of your writing, in my opinion, indicates you are a researcher who has helped categorize Harvard's Numismatic Collection and observed an unlearned, vocal, minority of academics, during the decade of your research, who do not think private ownership of antiquities is acceptable.
If I am incorrect in my understanding of your post, please enlighten me.

Robert

 

To be brief, it hasn’t been Harvard’s collection but that of a similarly well-known university. Apart from that, you summarized one half of my point well. The other and more important half is that most academics I personally know don’t hold such views on private ownership of antiquities but are less vocal about it.

Please excuse if that reads hazy. English is not my first language.

 

If the "silent majority" of academics etc. doesn't soon speak-up in favor of ethical collecting and against this "vocal minority", then they will be effectively complicit. I can think of some very discouraging parallels of silent majorities standing on the sidelines while vocal minorities did very bad things.

 

Great narrative Donna, you go girl. Institutional pride is alive and well. Thanks

 

Are pictures of the trays still online anywhere?

 

Edit: this worked last night but apparently no longer works. Sorry


CNG did a pretty good job delisting them but if you put the following into Google(make sure to include quotes!) you can find many of them:

site:auctions.cngcoins.com "nor'eastern collection"

 

Thanks -- unfortunately, there's a big "cancelled" where the photos should be.

 

Thanks -- I know it's not considered cool to say that you went to a school like that, because people will think you're bragging. So I rarely do, and I never thought I would have reason to mention it here. But I am proud of it, especially given the backgrounds my parents came from.

 

Yeah, they did. The items aren't even in my watched list anymore.

 

A fellow member was kind enough to share with me a number of photos of coins from the cancelled auction that he had (very presciently) downloaded. If the containers in the photos are the so-called "trays," I would call them small coin boxes instead, because they're only big enough to hold one coin each. They're all exactly alike, and look quite old, so I suppose they must be Yale's original trays/boxes. If so, it makes me wonder if the different provenances written on the card inserts are phony: it doesn't make any sense to me that Yale would have sold all these coins to multiple dealers at some point, all of whom kept them in their original Yale boxes, and then magically sold them all to a single buyer, which is how they all ended up together with CNG. It would make a lot more sense to me if someone with access to the collection stole them all from Yale, stupidly kept them in their original boxes, and wrote up fictional provenances supposedly explaining how he acquired them. Except that I see no purchase dates, and the prices mostly look so low that the "purchases" would have been too long ago for CNG to be able to confirm them. (Some of the $1 and $2 prices are so low that I wonder if they're realistic even if the coins were supposedly purchased as long ago as the 1950s or 1960s.)

 

I do agree with you. Your point is all the more important since it doesn't apply only to the demonization of private collecting but also to other "loud demands" we increasingly see.

Yet, I'd like to point out that speaking-up is easier said than done. An aggressive social media post by a well-connected colleague who is a "true believer" in some "righteous cause" can easily ruin a junior academic's career in the current climate. The fear of being publicly tagged "controversial," which effectively means "unemployable," causes many researchers with nuanced, moderate views to just keep silent and let vocal people with extreme opinions dominate the field on all sides. I don't want to apologize this behavior, but I think it is understandable.

I currently don't see any clear way out of this dilemma. It was part of the reason why I decided to not continue working in American academia and moved back to Europe last year.

 

I had a similar thought about someone making up provenance information to cover their tracks but it makes no sense that someone would know enough to do that and yet keep the original incriminating evidence. If I remember correctly some of the provenances proudly stated they were from Yale as well.

My guess based on the prices was the coins were bought pre-1950s. Not all of the coins in the sale had the boxes (maybe about half?). The others just had tickets. I wonder if Yale was only claiming the ones in the boxes or all of them?

Did you happen to come across any of the coin photos that show just the ticket coins? Same handwriting?

 

Am I wrong to think that most of the doctrinaire voices condemning private ownership of ancient art and artifacts come from the archaeology discipline, rather than art history or classics? I've seen some archaeologists argue that so-called artistic value is irrelevant (not to mention culturally determined, another can of worms), that objects are completely worthless divorced from their archaeological context, and that not only should private ownership of such artifacts be prohibited, but even museums shouldn't display them anymore. I don't see that kind of reasoning so much from art historians and classicists, who, by definition, take artistic (and literary) attributes into account.

 

I'm pretty bad at recognizing whether handwriting is the same, but they did look very similar. More importantly, the tickets I looked at are all in the identical format, regardless of the alleged seller, with "COST" pre-printed at the bottom. So I assumed they were all written by the buyer, not the supposed seller.

I agree with you, by the way, that it makes no sense that a hypothetical thief clever enough to invent fake provenances would have been stupid enough to keep the incriminating evidence in the form of Yale's original boxes. But I can't think of any other explanation if, in fact, those boxes are all Yale boxes.

 

I've seen a mix of them unfortunately. Archaeologists are for sure leading the charge but plenty of people with degrees outside of archaeology seem to have similar feelings. Even the current ANS president, Ute Wartenberg, is a proponent of MOUs and an ally of the Archaeological Institute of America in their fight to end private collecting. She even previously submitted a pro-MOU comment on ANS letterhead. This is particularly surprising given the yearly ANS auctions which often feature coins with no stated provenance. I've actually decided not to renew my ANS membership over this, as much as it pains me, because the ANS does wonderful work and I very much enjoy their zoom meetings, but as a private collector it's hard for me to support a Numismatic organization headed by someone who ultimately supports anti-collector sentiment and legislation, and who has pulled the organization into it (by use of their letterhead) without any consequences. The ANA on the other hand, is as pro-collector as it gets.

 

My assumption was that, if they were stolen, the thief either got the boxes mixed up or grabbed the wrong bottoms for the coins in their haste. Heck, the bottom boxes might just be one way how Yale knew, or believes, they were stolen items.

 

I can't believe there are 4 pages in input on a topic/event that we don't have enough information. Although the information is interesting, there are so many holes and lack of information to come up with a decision of who did what to someone.
I was the Internal Auditor for a major university (which I'll leave nameless or as Jack Webb of Dragnet said "The names have been changed to protect the innocent.")
Over the years of my employ, I discovered many misappropriation of funds and property. Some were small and some were thousands of dollars. For instance: The Dean of the Graduate School of Business bought 50 or more calculators from a grant for his students. During my audit of the grant, I found that his purchases. In those years, an electronic calculator could cost upward of $300 or more. The grant specified how the funds were to be used and it wasn't for calculators. Also, all purchases of $100 or more were supposed to be included in the university's equipment inventory and tagged. That exception was in excess of $15,000, which he was required to pay back the grant. The calculators could not be located, but a report was made and the students were required to return the calculators. The Dean lost his position and was asked to retire.
Another item I found during my audit was that the School of Allied Medicine purchased several cars with State funds. The paid for all of the operation and maintence costs of of their State budget. However, they made the cars available to other agencies and they charged them a mileage rate. When they were reimbursed for the use of the cars, instead of reimbursing their State budget, they deposited in a local bank to be used for whatever they wish to use it. The State Budget Offices policy is that all funds that are generated from the use of State funds, is to be reimbursed to their State Budget. Over the 5 years that I audited, the Dean of the School of Allied Health had generated over $300,000 from the "rental" of the state vehicles. The balance in their bank account was less than $150,000 which was immediately seized and the Dean was charged with misappropriation of state funds and grand theft. Naturally, he pleaded ignorance of the policy. He got 10 years.
These two Deans are only a tip of the iceberg of university misappropriations.
Back to Yale, my example is just a sample of university integrity. Just because they work for a major university, didn't mean there wasn't a fox in the chicken house.