"I have recently received unsolicited email attcks from Mr. Barford. They are now consigned to the spam bin for permanent disposal". Apart from the ability to boast about such heights of geekdom that he has a "spam bin" as if nobody else had one, in the circumstances this is a strange and most decidely deliberately provocative thing to say.
In order to set the record straight, i have posted the actual texts of these three messages John Rieske provocatively alleges are "attacks" on my Metal-detector-nonsense-ghetto-blog so readers can see what the average coin collector regards as an "attack". It does not say much for numismatists and their dediation to scholarly debate when an attempt to establish the true facts behind a discovery is treated as an aggressive act.
Vignette: Please Miss, Barford said nasty things about collecting.....
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4 comments:
Actually, what that little fellow is saying to his teacher is what you said recently -
"The moral imperative is when offered goods which there is a very good chance were illegally obtained is to ensure they are not, and if the seller will not or cannot allow you to verify that, not to buy them. Period."
So many millions of words spluttered and all the time all that was ever needed was for certain people to stop trying to deny it or persuade others it was a lie put about by extremists, lefties, Washingtonians and furriners.
I think what is going on is nothing else than a smear campaign conducted by straw-for-brains dealers who cannot find answers to the criticisms of the no-questions-asked market.
See http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2010/05/barford-and-torquemada.html
of course they get away with it because they know that no sawdust-for-brains collector is going to check up what actually lies behind their animosity.
These people are on the whole are just not very bright and faced with anyone who has a different view from the ones they uncritically support, personal attack is the only tactic that occurs to them. If these people were cleverer after all, they'd be reading and writing books on the past in which they claim their no-questions-asked collecting is an expression of a passionate interest in.
All I see a "passionate interest" in is buying stuff and shouting down and insulting anyone who says that there's a more responsible way to go about doing that.
They started this with their rabid anti- archaeological and anti-social stance dressed as "internationalist" and "cosmopolitan" altruism. But the more of these types of tactics they employ the easier it is to show that they are well aware that their other arguments are in reality empty. Reasoning observers among the real stakeholders (the general public) will soon decide whether no-questions-asked collecting is as socially desirable a phenomenon as the lobbyists using such tactics make out. How seruiously can one take people like Dave Welsh and Wayne Sayles who constantly uses such arguments?
Not at all. To say that buying unprovenanced coins doesn't aid looting is one of those fictions that is so obvious that it has to be spat out, along with copious amounts of venom towards anyone that might see what a fib it is.
For anyone to contend that unprovenanced coins bought by a dealer don't include looted ones (to an entirely unknown percentage of the total unprovenanced turnover) is to contend that looters don't sell unprovenanced coins, they sell provenanced ones! Hence the tangled web tangles and tightens...
No, I think it's very safe to say on the grounds of plain logic that those who deal in unprovenanced coins DO all deal in looted goods to an extent and therefore encourage looters, looting and all the murkiness that attaches itself to them including organised crime, people trafficking and terrorism. Don't like being associated with all that? Don't paddle in the murk then.
Anti-social dressed as "internationalist" is good way of putting it.
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