Dealers and stolen coins.

So are you saying that the pawn shop would scare people to believe there items would sit in evidence for six months unless they bought it back from the pawn shop?:veryangry:

 

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I think Doug nailed it. Pawn shops here make a good attempt to make sure items are not stolen, because, although they are not generally prosecuted, they lose whatever was paid for the stuff.

Then, if they keep getting a lot of stolen stuff, the authorities can jerk their license and shut them down.

No way would a legitimate shop ever knowingly accept stolen goods. The risk is too great. And as I said, if they catch you getting stuff over and over, they really tear your place apart and keep a real close eye on you to build a criminal case.

 

In some states you have to give the pawn shop what they paid for it, so why would a pawn shop avoid stolen goods? If the worst case scenario for the pawn shops is having to sell the items back for what they "say" they paid for them?

 

One of my criminology professors, Liqun Cao, had several interesting publications to his credit. A couple of times in class, he said off-hand that 20% of the goods on the market have no clear title. That applies to Nikes new in the box at a flea market and it applies to boxcars of automobile parts going to Detroit, across the board. His point was that property crimes are more common than Uniform Crime Reports or National Victimization Surveys guess. That, too, has social and political ramifications.

 

I suspect the dealer could legally hold the property until served with a writ of replevin.

 

That is a good story - the recovery part.

My coins and currency were stolen. I caught the bandit (a neighbor) a few weeks later with some of the stolen property walking down the hallway of our hotel like apartments. He had my tape recorder in hand which was stolen at the same time. Well, I phoned the police and told my side of the story. The police officer arrived and made me give back my tape recorder (I grabbed it out of the bums hands when passing him).

That was such an upsetting experience. Even if the police were to walk in his apt and see every one of my coins and silver certs, I could not prove they were mine.

 

That sucks. I guess if you don't have any kind of verification, you have little or no chance of getting your coins back.

 

Good reminder. I need to do that. I do not use a camera very much (throw away type only). I have been trying to write down serial numbers on some items. I will consider a better system.

Thanks for the reminder.

 

Good point. There is a shady dealer in XXXXXXXXX, (X'ed out to protect the guilty), who got caught because of serial numbers. The police went to his shop and asked if he had bought any currency from a robbery, and he said no. Later after the thief was caught they raided his home and found them, he had purchased them for pennies on the dollar. Remember to write down your serial numbers.

He is still around, saw him at CICF last year.

 

Can any dealer join ANA? I often associate professional membership with a credible service. Is there a procedure to weed out the bad and ugly? -(in order to protect the good).

 

Yes in the ANA bylaws there are rules for ANA dealers. They have hearings and do kick them out. I know of one and in the Numismatist they list them when they get kicked.

 

Their best protection is to have a system in place to assure they are not trading in stolen coins. But the resistance to this is enormous. They are lucky not to get jailed for this. Selling stolen property is a criminal act in most jurisdictions. They should count their blessings.

And you were lucky to get the coins back. I had found the auction houses that have been tracked down to sell coins stolen from our family refused cooperation.

 

How exactly do you propose to do that. I walk into the shop with some coins "I inherited from my grandpa". How do you PROVE they are not stolen?

You cannot prove a negative, logic 101. Sure, MAYBE there was a reported theft recently, MAYBE a TPG serial number was reported stolen, but usually not. Most dealers have no way to PROVE its not illegals goods.

If you have a solution, I think every dealer here would love to hear it.

 

We did not know until weeks after the burglary. As for the facts, we had, as you are likely aware, detailed images of all the coins, receipts and a spread sheet with all the details. What we didn't have was a cooperative police department willing to make a detailed police report of the lose or even a decent investigation. We did not have cooperation with auction houses and TPGers who refuse cooperation. We have a system that encourages theft. Coins, even raw coins, can be identified. Dealers and pawnshops can be held responsible. It happens in other industries, and it happens when insurance companies get involved.

The first step, of course, it to get dealers and auction houses on board to take due diligence with every coin that is handled and to make substantial civil penalties for being caught with stolen property. Right now the system supports criminal activity.

No, what we have is not even a fraction of what exists in the fine arts community, and not even as protected as bicycles. Bicycles, for example, can get registration numbers and can be registered with the police department.

That is a failure of understanding crime, especially in urban environments. You have coins in your house and coins in the house with windows locked when you leave. You can even have them in a safe. There is no end to protection one can have, and it will be defeated by thieves. You can't stop crime by having physical protection. Banks can't do it and people can do it even less. Crime only comes under control when the law is enforced, and the risks of getting caught rise and that can only be accomplished with cooperation of dealers, auction houses and third party graders.

1. I can take a picture of a coin now, today, and I can identify that coin, without a slab, with nearly 97% of less that a tenth of a standard deviation, forever. There are identifying features on individual coins and imperfections or even micro hair lines, that can fingerprint that coin. Coins can be slabbed and locked out of the market until an owner unlocks the coin. That is ONE way to greatly reduce the market for stolen coins.
2. We can change the law to end sunset provisions for pawn shops and end the safe harbor they have with regard to collectables and artifacts
3. We can have an international database for all stolen items that are shared by all dealers and TPGs.
4. We have register all coin dealers and have them take fraud and abuse training like they have for every health provider in the US.
5. We can end all anonymous sales, which is something the art world has been fighting for against Christies for decades. Much progress is made on this as auction houses have to keep better records that previously, but not enough to protect the small time collector.
6. We can devise affordable safes for coin collectors with GPS system and Bio-metrics.
   
7. We can take several actions to encourage and make it easier for all coin thefts to be reported so we can get accurate figures of the problem.
   
8. We can promote changes in the law and within police departments to take these cases more seriously.
9. We can have mandatory reporting requirments for suspected stolen property for coin dealers. It should not be enough to just turn them away. You need to report them as well.
   
10. The end of cash purchases of coins for more than $500, which is the law in Europe.

That is just some ideas off the bat. The one thing Coin Talk can do is create an environment that encourages all this, starting with a section for people to report all coin thefts, even small ones that generally never get reported to the police. It should be a moderated section and all the entries should have a the following:

• description of the lost coins, with
  
• images if possible,
  
• contact information for the person who stole the coins,
• contact for the police department that is investigating the theft
• Serial Numbers of the Slabs
• Time and Date the Theft was discovered
• approximate value of the stolen coins
• Receipt of the purchase of the coins
• The reporting agent

Of course you can. And they are guilty. It can never be what you just said. Business ethics collapse if they are, "I will do everything I can that is allowed to me under the law, and skirt ethics at every turn to turn a profit, and use a battery of lawyers to defend myself" The law can never cover all instances of due diligence and morality when it comes to business practices. Businesses have compliance and business ethics, and even mission statements, and these are not defined in the law and it can never be. Corporate culture is part and parcel of business operations. The law will always be a step behind the latest abuses within a market. Ethics are the responsibility of the auction houses, and the dealers. Who else are you going to depend on? The criminals?

The cry, "I did nothing illegal" is simply not enough (as well as it is usually not true). You have to do what is right by a reasonable code of ethics and protect your clients, yourself and society at large. The minute you forget this, we are in trouble.... like Enron trouble.

Remember the Ford Pinto.

 

You don't buy those coins. You especially don't buy them for cash, and you report them to the police. "I inherited from my Grandpas" is a legal transaction that can be supported by the executor of the estate, and paperwork. Snap, just like that the problem is solved. How often are coins stolen from old people. It is disgusting.

The sale of such items needs to stop until the the legality is clarified. Will this change the velocity of coin transaction. 100% it will and that is what we need. It is a different mindset than what we have currently in the industry. But it is in line with most other industries. Try being in the healthcare system. It is mandated to actively identify and take measure and report all business activies to prevent abuse and fraud.

 

Dude, I understand you are upset someone stole from you. If you want to press for a national database of coins that every single buyer of coins must check by law. Ok, press for that, (you will get nowhere but go ahead).

Short of that, let's get back to how buyers are supposed to KNOW. You can wish they did, but how are you proposing that they KNOW they are stolen? If they cannot be proven to know, how do you propose to punish them? YOU CANNOT PROVE A NEGATIVE. Short of a mandatory national database, you cannot prove they knew, and most of the time they DIDN'T KNOW.

Again, sorry you are upset, but did you have your own safe or have them in a SDB? Did you have insurance?