"If there is no reason to suspect ..." the coin elves again

Over on the Moneta-L discussion list, Ross Glanfield asks: "Are you saying that it is legal to import coins into the U.S. that have been illegally exported from Bulgaria (or anywhere else)?" Now there's a leading question. Quick as a flash, Californian coin dealer and "collectors' rights" activist Dave Welsh of Classical Coins answered:

The law on this is complicated and in significant areas it rests upon rulings that have not been tested. Basically, it is unlawful to knowingly transport stolen property (or to conspire to do so) into the USA. The issue is what constitutes "stolen property." If there is no reason to suspect that a particular coin or group of coins has been smuggled out of a source state that controls exports, then bringing it into the USA in most cases would not be unlawful. My own personal standard is to avoid any situation involving importation of coins unless I know the source, and am confident that there is no reason to suspect that they have been smuggled.

The law is perfectly clear about "what constitutes stolen property". If the law says it belongs to somebody else and somebody takes it, it is stolen. A stolen car does not become an unstolen car just by driving it to another country. What Mr Welsh means is that he does not recognise the right of foreign countries (such as Poland by virtue of the 1928 and subsequent laws on the protection of the historical and cultural heritage) to declare certain resources the property of the state to be used for the benefit of all citizens. He wants to sell these very same types of items in California and questions whether any foreign government should have the right to want to see them put to another use. That is the whole rationale behind Mr Welsh's activism.

There is nothing wrong with Mr Welsh and his fellow antiquity dealers selling antiquities and antiques in the USA which can be documented as having left the source country legally. That is what we call the legitimate trade, and in reality nobody at all is concerned to put a stop to that (conflicting claims only derive from antiquity dealers' scare-mongering). The problem is however that dealers and collectors do not see any clear boundary between that legitimate market in items with secure legitimate provenances and the shady dealings of items without. It is here that all the self-justificatory arguments about "collectors' rights" and "irrational laws" and weasel-worded codes of practice come into play. They are the means by which collectors of portable antiquities are asked to engage in a game of self-justificatory self-deception to cover for the fact that part of this market is far from legitimate.

As for "If there is no reason to suspect that a particular coin or group of coins has been smuggled out of a source state that controls exports, then bringing it into the USA in most cases would not be unlawful". Well, that is nonsense. Each of those "source countries" that controls exports (which is what the 1970 UNESCO Convention [Article 6] requires of all states party anyway)issues export licences. Given the known extent of the illicit trade, any portable antiquity being offered on the market unaccompanied by an export licence or verifiable provenance placing its removal from the source country before introduction of export controls is indeed suspect. It is not buying "in good faith" to ignore that suspicion, it is simply self-deception.

The UNESCO 1970 treaty has an Article 13. It would be worth dealers and collectors in denial reading it (also they might note Art. 8) and considering what that actually means countries like the US and UK who are party to it should be doing . Should be, but are not (yet). Britain has its 'Dealing in Cultural Property (Offences) Act of 2003, the US has... well, what? The illicit trade in antiquities however does not exist in a vacuum, which suggests that the policy of the turning of a blind eye by unconcerned officialdom may well be due for revision.

Mr Welsh states that the policy of Classical Coins is; "to avoid any situation involving importation of coins unless I know the source, and am confident that there is no reason to suspect that they have been smuggled". I have on this blog (and before that on at least one forum) asked Mr Welsh about the bulk lots of coins of apparent Balkan origin he is currently offering for sale on his website. Now personally, I would think that anyone knowing what is going on in the Balkans would have very good reason to suspect that job lots of uncleaned coins recently (post 1990) offered on the market and apparently (mintmarks etc) coming from the region had been smuggled to wherever it was he bought them. In the current situation, that would seem to be an unavoidable suspicion. Only if the seller had a valid export licence for those particular coins could there be "confidence" that this was not the case. Mr Welsh however has several times declined to reveal the source of his "confidence" in this regard. Neither has he said anything which would suggest he knows their "source", indeed, he has several times explicitly stated that he believes that the great bulk of the coins on the market come from hoards "buried on the edges of battlefields" and are found by specialist hoard seekers searching with metal detectors well away from any known sites. These notions are pure fantasy and may be placed among such fairy stories as the coins coming from leprachauns and elves instead of site-trashing artefact hunters.

I have also asked about the Parthian coins being offered by the same "collectors' rights" activist-dealer on his website. No straight answer was forthcoming, merely an intimation that they had come "from Spain". Hmmm.

I would say that since Classical Coins is run by a vociferous "collectors' rights" activist intent on whitewashing the antiquities trade (at least that part of it that involves the coins he and fellow ACCG dealers sell), it is perfectly justifiable to ask for some explanation of the business practices behind the objects we see. So why is Mr Welsh so coy about stating the basis of his "confidence" that the removal of these items from the ground and the source country was in full accord with the law? For from a "collectors' rights" activist representing the hobby as a whole, we should surely be asked to expect nothing less.

But actually its not only the Law which should concern us. It is the broader ethical issues that we should not lose sight of here, and by bthis I mean an approach rather than weasel-worded dealers' "codes of ethics" which actually mean nothing.