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WP reports ACCG lawsuit and CPAC Hearing



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 8th 10, 10:04 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Dave Welsh
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 72
Default WP reports ACCG lawsuit and CPAC Hearing

For some coin collectors, federal regulations don't add up

http://tinyurl.com/28bkcgb

[
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...7/AR2010050705
046.html ]

By Maria Glod
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/maria+glod/

They're only worth about $275, but 23 bronze coins seized by the federal
government at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport last year
just might be the most important chunk of change for numismatists in years.

These well-worn coins, struck more than a thousand years ago in Cyprus and
China, are at the center of a dispute over U.S. rules that collectors across
the country say could threaten their popular and beloved hobby.

For generations, collectors have freely bought and sold coins from around
the world, including many from ancient times. But the United States in
recent years began restricting imports of some coins as part of a broader
effort to protect antiquities and combat the looting of archaeological sites
abroad.

It began with some Cypriot coins in 2007, then certain Chinese coins were
added last year. But numismatists are worried that Roman coins, the passion
of many collectors, could be next to join the list.

So the Missouri-based Ancient Coin Collectors Guild bought the 23 bronze
coins in April last year from a London dealer, solely to challenge the rules
and set off a legal showdown over requirements that people show proof of
where or when certain coins are unearthed.

In a lawsuit filed February in Maryland federal court, the collectors say
presidents John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan were
ancient coin collectors. Most coins, they contend, were so widely circulated
in ancient times that it might be impossible to know when they were dug up.
Plus, they argue, the rules will do little to discourage plundering because
they apply only to U.S. collectors.

Wayne G. Sayles, a longtime collector and guild executive director, said he
agrees that some antiquities -- such as religious icons, mummies and
precious artwork -- need the government's protection and belong to the
people of the country in which they were found. But he thinks coins are
different. Most aren't high-dollar items, he says, and collectors keep,
study and protect coins that museums don't want.

"Do I think that the Liberty Bell ought to be sold to somebody in Russia?
No, it belongs here. I understand that, and I agree with that. But we're not
talking about the Liberty Bell," Sayles said.

On the flip side, there's Richard M. Leventhal, an anthropology professor at
the University of Pennsylvania. He's among those who see a coin or pottery
bowl or marble statue as pieces of one big historical puzzle. Leventhal, who
said he once was shot at by looters at an ancient Mayan site in Belize (they
missed), supports the restrictions that he thinks will hinder
metal-detector-toting thieves who destroy historic sites before
archaeologists can study them.

....

On Wednesday, Leventhal and Sayles attended a hearing before the State
Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee on an agreement with Italy
that restricts the import of some pre-classical, classical and Imperial
Roman artifacts. Many collectors are lobbying against the addition of coins,
while many archaeologists want them on the list.

Souzana Steverding of Ancient Coins for Education told the committee that
the restrictions would hurt her group's efforts to put common ancient coins
in the hands of students. Brown University archaeology professor Susan
Alcock said they should be protected. "There may be millions of these little
suckers, but they are still important," she said.

Sebastian Heath, the Archaeological Institute of America's vice president
for professional responsibilities, said he gets frustrated when he sees
ancient coins, still caked in the dirt in which they were found, advertised
on eBay with no indication they were studied in context. "It's impossible to
recover that knowledge," he said.

It may seem like this is a clear divide between collectors and
archaeologists, until you hear from Alan M. Stahl, curator of Princeton
University's extensive coin collection.

Stahl is an archaeologist who appreciates the great value of finding a coin
buried exactly where it dropped centuries ago. Coins help date sites or
provide clues to where people traveled. But he also purchases coins to grow
the university's collection, one of the oldest in the United States. And, he
said, few coins on the market have the paperwork to prove their provenance.

"It is not a simple problem, which is why I don't put myself solidly in
either camp," Stahl said.

In fact, Stahl presents the issue to students in the numismatic
methodologies class he teaches. "If there is a coin that would improve
Princeton's collection for teaching and research purposes, and the only
example does not come with provenance, should I buy it?" he asks. The
students, he said, almost always vote yes.

One recent afternoon, Michael Mehalick, an internship coordinator at
Montgomery College and a guild member who has collected coins since he was a
boy, laid out some of his prized ancient Roman coins on the kitchen counter
of his New Carrollton home. Most cost about $50 to $100.

Mehalick, a history buff who can tick off names of Roman leaders, doesn't
want sites to be looted. But he thinks the new rules would do little to
deter plundering and would make it harder for him to legally purchase coins.

"It's strange because coins have been collected for hundreds and hundreds of
years," Mehalick said. "It's a way to have a tangible piece of history that
is not too expensive. Most of the coins I have, you probably would not see
in a museum because there is not enough interest."

Posted to the list by:

Dave Welsh
Unidroit-L Listowner
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L




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  #2  
Old May 8th 10, 10:26 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Reid Goldsborough[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 357
Default WP reports ACCG lawsuit and CPAC Hearing

On 5/8/2010 5:04 PM, Dave Welsh wrote:

...


Dave Walsh posted here the entire copyrighted Washington Post article
except for two paragraphs, one of which spells out the reasoning of
those he disagrees with, which Dave indicated above by ellipsis points
(...). For the sake of completeness, here are the two paragraphs of this
21-paragraph article that were left out:

"Coins are part of the record of our past. To learn about the past and
think about our identities and cultural heritage, coins have to be
included," Leventhal said. "Ripping stuff out of the ground destroys our
knowledge of who we are and where we came from.

Under federal rules, anyone bringing certain ancient coins that are
Cypriot or Chinese into the United States must either have an export
permit from that country or documents that show they were unearthed
elsewhere or purchased before the regulations went into effect."

The article identifies Wayne Sayles as a collector, which was likely how
he identified himself. But he's a dealer, and he represents dealer
interests, primarily, though like just about all dealers he started out
as a collector and still collects coins. The group he runs, Ancient Coin
Collectors Guild (ACCG), also primarily represents dealer interests,
despite its name.

Dealer and collector interests here don't necessarily coincide,
completely, though neither group is monolithic in its beliefs. Many
collectors take a middle ground approach, neither the position at one
extreme of ACCG or at the other extreme of the Archaeological Institute
of America, a middle ground position that's represented as the article
points out by Alan M. Stahl of Princeton University. This middle ground
position was also spelled out well by Richard Witschonke of the American
Numismatic Society in an editorial published by the Celator magazine
some months ago.

Scholars like these support actions that preserve information now lost
with the current ancient coin distribution system, which has been in
place for many decades and which ACCG is trying to preserve, in which
the majority of new ancient coin finds are secretly and illegally
smuggled out of source countries so as not to run afoul of the laws of
these countries. What's needed most of all isn't the preservation of the
current badly flawed system but the changing of these laws so that the
context of coin and artifact finds can be studied, which could greatly
add to our knowledge, so that museums in these countries could have
first crack at what they wanted to keep and display, and so that
collectors could have a crack at the rest.

For the most part, they way they're constructed today, cultural
patrimony laws in source countries are irrational and draconian,
attempting to claim for that country even the most common ancient coins
and other artifacts even when they may not have been minted in that
country or even ever circulated in that country. Coins of the Roman
empire are just one example, which Italy is now trying to claim for
itself as its cultural heritage, when any given Roman coin may have been
produced at a mint in France, Germany, Great Britain, or elsewhere and
when such coins aren't strictly Italy's cultural heritage but the
cultural heritage of all countries today once under the rule of the
Roman empire as well as individuals whose ancestors lived in those
countries.

Of the ten objectives of ACCG that it spells out at its site, none deal
with improving the current badly flawed distribution system. Not
surprisingly, none of ACCG's seven officers are affiliated with any
universities or museums and its benefactors are primarily (or
exclusively?) ancient coin dealers and the VCoins marketplace.

Yes, private collecting should be preserved. But the current system
needs changing.

--

Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
 




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