Friday 10 December 2010

Spanish Antiquities Bust and the CoinForgery Discussion List

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Apparently coin buyers in the US are feeling the pinch of the Spanish raids. There has been a little coverage of it even on the coin forgery list due to this post by Edward Owen (Lake Hopatcong, NJ):
I just received a phone call from this dealer saying he can't ship 2 very nice coins I won at good prices on eBay because they've been seized by the police. I'm not sure whether to believe him or not and am wondering if he is actually just selling them to someone else at a better price? He's an active Spanish dealer and I'm wondering if he's contacted anyone else about coins they've bought being seized by police or not? I would find it awfully suspicious if only my 2 had been 'seized'.
So much for collectors dealing only with dealers they "trust" eh? Oddly Mr Owen seems unwilling to actually reveal the name of the dealer he is asking about.... (eh?). Anyway a Spanish collector linked to the initial local news reports mentioning the first stages of the investigation, Mr Owen was in denial "Well, I'm not sure whether this is related or not. I somehow doubt my Spanish coin dealer is also dealing drugs and arms sales !" and then he found my account based on the news reports.

What happens next is significant. He was then warned by V-Coins coin dealer Ron Bude (whose numerous offerings of ancient British coins are in themselves worthy of further comment) that "I would not trust Barford's website to provide an unbiased account of the situation". [Quite right, I urge anybody reading this to check for themselves what collectors themselves reveal about the hobby and not take my word for it]. Then follows coin dealer Dave Welsh's attack on my "credentials" to write anything at all on the matter. Then a Spanish collector urges "I will ask all members to make the life of moderators easy and to not place any other message on this subject." The subject that he thinks coin collectors and dealers on the list should not be discussing was: "Arrests of 40 Spanish Coin & Antiquity dealers". He then attempts to change the subject: "Any new interesting fake flying in the net?". I posted a comment pointing out that the raids had disclosed that this network had also been producing and selling fake artefacts too...

It seems pretty transparent what is going on here. One can only imagine what is happening on Yahoo's "Moneta-L" and "AncientArtifacts" discussion lists. Why not register with them and take a look just how antiquity dealers are dealing with the crisis there?

2 comments:

David Gill said...

Paul
This is part of Operation Carolina Mosaico. For further details with details of the Spanish reports please see here.

Paul Barford said...

Thanks, I gave a link to your piece in an update to another post on the topic.

 
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