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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kirispupis, post: 7850192, member: 118780&quot;]I don&#039;t think bronze disease is a sure-fire way to determine the coin was taken from the ground illegally. AFAIK this can happen to many coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Based on all of the news articles I&#039;ve read, the following is how I read the MOUs: while they <i>technically</i> prevent all but the oldest provenance coins from crossing borders, they&#039;re <i>really</i> a legal framework that enables governments to seize and repatriate coins that <i>are</i> of significant cultural significance and/or <i>were</i> looted from cultural sites.</p><p><br /></p><p>My understanding is archeologists make an inventory of all coins pulled from a dig. Occasionally, those coins go missing, but it&#039;s possible to correlate those coins with the original inventory. In the Blaine WA story above, several coins in the man&#039;s possession were on the red list of known coins looted from Afghanistan. In that case, it certainly seems reasonable to seize them.</p><p><br /></p><p>In reality, the Turkish and Greek governments may <i>say</i> they want all coins, but they&#039;re <i>really</i> interested only in certain ones. There are very few of us here with the budgets to even consider the coins which a government would actually step in to seize. I would expect those same people to seriously care about documented provenance, as that&#039;s the only real defense.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately, there do happen to be the overzealous border agent or two who is strict in adhering to the MOUs and has the time to investigate each coin to determine where it was circulated. The odds of us &quot;normal collectors&quot; from hitting one are very small but not zero.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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