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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 2970841, member: 19409&quot;]So years ago, a coin dealer put up some coins from the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus.&nbsp; I hadn&#039;t heard of it at the time, but the coins were much nicer than what you usually expect of Gallienus, and I loved the idea of being able to own a coin from a known hoard.&nbsp; And luckily, the analysis of the hoard is on Numiswiki <a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=antioch%20hoard%20of%20gallienus" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=antioch%20hoard%20of%20gallienus" rel="nofollow">here</a>&nbsp; So I immediately got to reading, but I found something I didn&#039;t expect:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>That confused me.&nbsp; I thought part of the point of identifying coins as being from a hoard was to establish provenance back to its find site and to confirm that these came from a real dig, not looting.&nbsp; But why would the country of origin mysteriously go missing?&nbsp; Like I could see collectors who bout a coin or two not keeping track and the provenance getting lost if a coin was inherited or something, but a whole hoard that was preserved together until the time that was written?&nbsp; At the time, I backed off the coins from that hoard, but otherwise tried not to think about it too much.&nbsp; It was really uncomfortable that something that looked so shady was just right there on a dealer&#039;s site, and no one in the collecting community seemed to act like anything strange was going on.&nbsp; I&#039;d occasionally think back on it and wonder if it was as bad as it looked or if I was just over-reacting.&nbsp; I&#039;ve decided to look into it.</p><p><br /></p><p>So the passage about this hoard is from the catalog for an auction of a large chunk of this hoard that took place in 1992.&nbsp; Unfortunately, that&#039;s the only indication we have for dating the find.&nbsp; Still, it does tell us that if we&#039;re questioning legality, we need to make sure we&#039;re not accidentally looking at laws from after then.&nbsp; The other big piece of information is this:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>A Turkish origin still seems likely enough that it&#039;s worth considering, so let&#039;s take a look at the antiquities laws of all three countries.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s pretty easy to find out what&#039;s legal in Syria.&nbsp; <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/syrianarabrepublic/sy_antiquitieslaw1963_engtof.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/syrianarabrepublic/sy_antiquitieslaw1963_engtof.pdf" rel="nofollow">Unesco&#039;s site has an official English translation of the Antiquities Law of 1963</a>.&nbsp; The most relevant sections are article 3, which defines coins as movable antiquities, article 4, which declares that all movable antiquities as property of the state, and 30-32 which state that if the state doesn&#039;t want the movable antiquities, they can be sold after a Presidential Decree and that antiquities can be kept by private individuals if they are registered with the government.&nbsp; And since last time I brought up foreign law, someone here told me that I should be careful as a layman reading a law through translation, <a href="http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Fraoua_en.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Fraoua_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">there&#039;s a mention of Syria requiring authorization for the export of antiquities on page 14/22 in this article by someone who specializes in cultural heritage legislation.</a></p><p><br /></p><p>So if this hoard was legally exported from Syria, there would be explicit permission given to this. It would make no sense for a dealer to not preserve this if they were keeping the hoard together, since it could only add to the value and make it less of a hassle to bring across international boarders. Given the requirement for registration of antiquities, there would also be some official record of this hoard.&nbsp; The fact that someone who bought such a large chunk of this hoard has no idea where it came from tells us that if this hoard originated in Syria at any point after 1963, it was exported illegally.</p><p><br /></p><p>So Turkey is the next easiest, since I found <a href="http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1215&amp;context=ijli" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1215&amp;context=ijli" rel="nofollow">an article from a Turkish law professor that discusses antiquities laws in Turkey since the 19th century.</a>&nbsp; I really think any ancient coin or antiquities collector should read this one, but the short version is that export of antiquities from Ottoman territory was forbidden in 1869, all antiquities were declared state property in 1906, and at least that latter decree was still law after the modern Turkish state emerged.&nbsp; Yes, that&#039;s been a thing for that long, and no, I&#039;ve never heard any coin collector or dealer mention this seemingly very important piece of information.&nbsp; So I checked UNESCO&#039;s database again, and they have the text of 1983&#039;s&nbsp; <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/turkey/turkey_lawconservationculturalnaturalproperty_1_entof" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/turkey/turkey_lawconservationculturalnaturalproperty_1_entof" rel="nofollow">Law on the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Property</a>, in which article 32 unambiguously states that cultural property, which the law earlier specifically states include ancient coins, are not allowed out of the country except on approved loan.&nbsp; So this can&#039;t have legally come out of Turkey after that date.&nbsp; I can&#039;t tell if there was as complete a ban on any exporting before (did the 1869 decree still have any effect?), but let&#039;s assume there wasn&#039;t and the government sometimes allowed exportation of its own property.&nbsp; It was still government property, and that means they&#039;d give you documentation if you were claiming it legally.&nbsp; A dealer would only be working against his own interest by not preserving such documentation.&nbsp; If this hoard came from Turkey, unless it was dug up and exported out of the country before 1869 and somehow kept together as a hoard for over a century, then it was exported illegally.</p><p><br /></p><p>Last we have Lebanon.&nbsp; While there are 1988 and 1990 ministerial decisions that forbid all exports of antiquities, it&#039;s hardly implausible that this hoard would have left the country before then, so I&#039;ll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that that&#039;s the case.&nbsp; UNESCO has a copy of the 1933 antiquities law, but only in French or Arabic, neither of which I can read (if any Francophones are interested, <a href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/lebanon/lebanon_reglement_7_11_1933_fre_orof.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.unesco.org/culture/natlaws/media/pdf/lebanon/lebanon_reglement_7_11_1933_fre_orof.pdf" rel="nofollow">here it is</a>).&nbsp; However, <a href="http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Fraoua_en.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Fraoua_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">this article on antiquities trafficking in the Arab world</a> explains some of it:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>So if this hoard came from Lebanon, they would have needed to filled out an application that left a record, and they would have gotten paperwork.&nbsp; If this hoard originated in Lebanon after 1933, then it was exported illegally.</p><p><br /></p><p>So yeah, it looks like this hoard was probably stolen from its home country.&nbsp; But I can think of some possible objections to and comments on my conclusion, so let&#039;s explore those.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Maybe paperwork just got lost along the way.</i></p><p>You can get paperwork replaced.&nbsp; And given how that makes the transport of a hoard like this much easier and adds value to the hoard, I can&#039;t see someone who had access not trying to replace it.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Maybe the hoard was dug up many decades before it was sold.</i></p><p>If someone (or a series of people) cared enough about keeping the hoard relatively whole that they kept it that way for decades, wouldn&#039;t they be exactly the sort of person who&#039;d want to keep track of where it was found?&nbsp; Or at least wouldn&#039;t they be a clear part of the history of the object they clearly loved so much?&nbsp; Like why isn&#039;t there a record like &quot;the hoard first turns up in the hands of Joe Schmo, a British schoolteacher who moved to the Ottoman Empire to teach English in 1853?&quot;&nbsp; And as far as I can tell, most hoards end up getting broken up by dealers, so it seems implausible that this didn&#039;t happen over the course of at least 30 years.&nbsp; So unless someone has examples of hoards staying together this long without being part of a museum collection or something (as those would leave records), this seems very unlikely.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Maybe someone was trying to hide their source so that the competition couldn&#039;t jump on it.</i></p><p>I could see trying to hide an individual seller, but telling a customer that a coin was found in Syria doesn&#039;t tell them which dealer in Aleppo gives you the good deals that your business relies on.&nbsp; Why wouldn&#039;t they preserve the rest of their information somehow?</p><p><br /></p><p><i>What if it was actually found somewhere else?</i></p><p>While the evidence points to the locations we looked at, it is of course possible that someone brought their wealth to another part of the empire, buried it, and died before they could add any coins that would indicate the new location.&nbsp; But another explanation being possible doesn&#039;t erase the fact that the countries I discussed are much, much more likely.&nbsp; Unless someone provides evidence pointing to another location, I see little reason to treat one as a serious possibility.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But this was sold by reputable, ethical dealers.</i></p><p>Yes, and I expect plenty of other reputable dealers to resell coins from this hoard in the future.&nbsp; In my experience, when it comes to ancient coin collecting, &quot;reputable&quot; and &quot;ethical&quot; mean something along the lines of &quot;he&#039;s really good about catching fakes and offers a lifetime guarantee of authenticity.&quot;&nbsp; Few collectors seem to care enough about cultural property issues to even comment on which dealers handle those well, so it&#039;s rarely a factor.&nbsp; Have you heard about those dealers making careful research of the provenance of their coins to make sure they were exported from their home countries legally?&nbsp; Have they talked about the importance of cultural property laws and preserving archaeological sites?&nbsp; Have they returned coins that were found to be smuggled?&nbsp; Remember that reputation should be judged by ones actions, not the other way around.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But the coins are real, so who cares?</i></p><p>Fake coins usually only harm those who buy them, and that harm is usually just lost money.&nbsp; Looted coins damage archaeological sites, rob both the coins and the sites of important context, and can fund organized crime.&nbsp; Like while the extent of it has often been exaggerated, ISIS does make money by smuggling antiquities (though of course that particular group didn&#039;t profit from this particular hoard).&nbsp; It&#039;s actually kind of odd that fakes are considered the bigger issue.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But the laws in those countries are awful and incredibly restrictive.</i></p><p>Oh, definitely.&nbsp; I support laws like those in England, which make ethical collecting possible and work with the fact that you&#039;re not going to stop treasure hunters instead of blanket bans that don&#039;t actually stop anyone.&nbsp; But that doesn&#039;t make the coins not stolen, and it doesn&#039;t erase any of the other issues with the illicit coin trade.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, these laws exist because people keep looting and ruining archaeological sites.&nbsp; Putting money into the hands of those looters is only going to perpetuate the system the laws are fighting against and justify those laws, not encourage something more reasonable.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But collectors take better care of them.&nbsp; It&#039;s better than sitting in a museum.</i></p><p>If I broke into your house, stole your coin collection, and I justified it by demonstrating that I had better methods of conservation,storage, and sharing information about them with the world, I&#039;m pretty sure you&#039;d still consider it theft and demand your coins back.</p><p><br /></p><p>And in case anyone suggests it, yes, Syria isn&#039;t a good place for antiquities right now.&nbsp; Even if I were telling you to find where all your coins came from and send them back to their origin countries (and I&#039;m not), I&#039;d tell you to hold off on the Syrian ones for a while.&nbsp; But whenever this hoard was dug up, they had no way of knowing what would happen to the country decades later, so this is not a good justification for theft.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But this hoard was dug up so long ago.&nbsp; Why does it matter now?</i></p><p>Most illicit coins are going to go through several hands before they make it to a collector.&nbsp; By supporting any part of it, you&#039;re supporting the whole system as well as showing that illicit coins will hold their value by continuing to buy them after the fact.&nbsp; I&#039;m sure some buyers of newer illicit coins would think twice if they saw that people who bought coins like those in this hoard were having trouble getting even half their money back when they sold them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Besides, stolen goods + time = old goods that are still stolen.&nbsp; I mean image that your current collection was stolen.&nbsp; How long would it take before you&#039;d be OK with people openly selling these coins to each other while being open that the coins probably came from you?</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Even you said that are technically ways that this could be legal.&nbsp; You haven&#039;t definitely proven them to be illicit goods.</i></p><p>It&#039;s also technically possible that your entire life has been a VR simulation and that you&#039;re actually a brain in a vat.&nbsp; Short of a confession, video evidence, or something like that, it&#039;s impossible to definitely 100% prove that a coin was stolen from a certain place.&nbsp; But we can still look at the evidence to determine how likely it is that a given coin or set of coins came through illicit means.&nbsp; And in this case, it&#039;s pretty clear that any legal export is very unlikely, so we have to act like these coins are probably stolen.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>But so many coins on the market have no provenance.&nbsp; How is this hoard different?</i></p><p>Honestly?&nbsp; Probably just the fact that the auction catalog gave us the evidence we needed to confirm that these aren&#039;t on the up and up.&nbsp; Countless antiquities are smuggled from these and more countries, but collectors mostly seem to have adopted what&#039;s basically a &quot;don&#039;t ask, don&#039;t tell&quot; policy when it comes to the origins of ancient coins, or at least the cheaper ones.&nbsp; I have definitely been guilty of this.&nbsp; But we need to come to terms with the fact that there have probably been hundreds if not thousands of hoards that had origins just as shady as the Antioch Hoard of Gallienus, but most dealers don&#039;t take the weirdly honest tactic of directly acknowledging problematic origins (and for all my problems with selling this, I do have to give props to Alex G. Malloy for not hiding this, having the hoard properly studied, and giving us at least the small bit of provenance of &quot;it&#039;s from this specific hoard,&quot; which is more than I can say for most of the coins I&#039;ve bought).</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>So all of this wasn&#039;t really about condemning a specific dealer or people who bought the coins from this hoard.&nbsp; I&#039;d expect most dealers to sell these coins as if nothing&#039;s wrong.&nbsp; The dealer I first saw selling coins from this hoard may very well have not thought to check if there could be issues with coins already auctioned by another respected dealer over a decade earlier.&nbsp; And I&#039;m sure that if you&#039;re someone who bought a coin from this hoard, you just thought you were buying a cool coin with an interesting history from a trusted guy.&nbsp; You didn&#039;t think there was a reason to think more about it or look more into it.&nbsp; While I myself didn&#039;t buy from this particular hoard, that exactly describes my experience with buying a lot of my coins.&nbsp; I&#039;m just as guilty of perpetuating this sort of thing.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not asking anyone to drop their collection off at the nearest Turkish embassy or something, but we need to improve.&nbsp; We need to start questioning the provenance of all the coins we buy, including crusty, cheap Constantines (and remember that you can literally just ask a dealer on V-Coins, Ebay, or Forvm if they have more information than in the listing, as they very well might).&nbsp; We should be thinking very carefully about where our coins come from and what buying a particular coin means.&nbsp; We should hold dealers accountable to illicit antiquities the same way that we hold them accountable for fakes.&nbsp; I believe we can make this hobby less harmful without abandoning it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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