Cleaning Smuggled Coins by CCCE

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Hmm, the latest addition (by "Fusion",Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:11 am) to the detecting forum thread "Re: olive oil and cleaning, FLO's doing battle gives the additional information:

For a good coin-cleaning guide (particularly for Roman ones), have a look at:
http://www.nobleromancoins.com/down.php?file=art.of.cleaning.coins.pdf

This has the highly pretentious title "The Art of Cleaning Ancient Coins" by one Kevin R. Sandes CCCE ("certified coin cleaning expert"). This, is a 200+ page plug for the author's own coin importing business. He's also a member of the ZZAntiquities forum which does not exactly bode well.

Now, Mr "Fusion" on recommending that page presumably read it, diamond tipped drills for tooling and all, and would have seen what is on page six before recommending it to the UK's metal detectorists. 

I suppose one could put it another way, more graphically: 

Not that I expect any US coineys would be worrying about a small thing like putting money into the pockets of smugglers (putting money into the pockets of criminals). But of course Mr Sandes is wholly wrong about the "once in the US" bit, if they were smuggled in then they cannot be legally owned. This is the essence of a number of cases going through the US courts right now, from "Tarby" and the Khouli case to (to make it more numismatical) the Korean money plate. Mr Sandes is misleading his customers. 

 

Even apart from the technical point of what is legal and illegal, licit and illicit, there is the ethical and moral issue of handling stolen goods. the reason coins are smuggled is that the seller has no documentation of legal possession, and no means of legally exporting them. US collectors quite happily accept this, gaily admitting that of course what they buy and sell are smuggled from foreign sources. 

 

Mr "Fusion"seems to have no qualms about recommending such behaviour either.