Angry Berk wants to "Beat Archaeologists"

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Harlan Berk of the Chicago-based Harlan J. Berk Ltd dealership in coins, antiquities and autographs (31 North Clark Street) has gone public. He says he is "angry" at and wants to "beat the archaeologists". This is what he is reported to have said at the New York ACCG meeting in January.

What is Mr Berk's gripe with archaeologists? He is reported to have made the remark while recalling that an archaeologist criticised the Ancient Coins for Education programme which seems to be a pet project of his. As a coin supplier, Berk seems rather sensitive to the size of the future potential market. In a text ("The Telegreedius") about telemarketing scams of "ancient coins for investment", he expresses concern that these scams "cost individuals immense amounts of money, and the collecting fraternity many possible members, who feel that coin and con are synonyms [...] and numismatists could become the endangered species". Then the coin dealer would have no customers. Here he is in a video trying to convince people to buy the coins using some rather odd statistics in the process (apart from him forgetting his lines in the middle, who spots the logical inconsequence in the argument about those "millions" of coins out there?).

So is the only problem that archaeologists criticise him for trying to get more people involved in the collection of decontextualised ancient dugups? That he sees them as rivals in the education of youth and a potential stumbling block in the way of getting more future customers? I suspect Mr Berk's distaste for archaeologists involves another kind of rivalry, for the use of a finite and fragile resource.

I was quite interested in this comment by coin collector Warren Esty about Mr Berk.

I get the impression that Berk sells very few established collections. The offerings seem to be almost all new to the market -- even the outstanding pieces. Most of them are without pedigree. He tends to have multiples of the top end of whatever has hit the market recently. His offerings almost always include a long runs of high-grade denarii and antoniniani, the sort you would expect to be the high end of recent hoards. He often has good runs of Republican pieces, again looking like hoard coins. Berk occasionally, but not regularly, has runs of late Roman AE, but, again, when hoards provide enough high-grade pieces to put them in a catalog. Greek and Roman AE is separated out and I get the impression that the catalogs have less AE because hoards of AE often do not have many top-end coins of average value high enough to warrant publication.

Mr Esty seems to be implying that Berk is buying recent finds rather than old collections, finds which many preservationists feel should be going to museums near where they were found instead of being scattered in various ephemeral private collections abroad. What Esty notes is also interesting as a lot of his coins are coming from countries currently with export restrictions. For example the breakdown of the coins in HJB's V-coins shop today is as follows:

Celtic (9, 6 British types)
Greek Spain & Gaul (0), Italy (19), Sicily & Carthage (26), Macedonia (9), Thrace (18), Illyria & Central Greece (22), Peloponnesus (1), Cyclades & Crete (1), Asia Minor & Cyprus (29), Syria & Phoenicia (20), Palestine/Judaea (29), Arabia to Charachene (0), Persis, Parthia, Sassanian (0), Bactria & Indo-Greek (2), Egypt (20) , North Africa (1) .
Roman Republican (17) , Imperatorial (7) , Imperial (252) , Provincial (47).
Byzantine (74)

Obviously keeping track of all those export licences will take up a bit of his staff's time, but then that is hardly the fault of any "archaeologists", that is the cost of ethical dealing. So what is Mr Berk's problem with archaeologists?