"Ancient Coins in North American Collections"

The Ancient Coin Collectors Guild claims there are 50000 collectors of dugup ancient coins from foreign soil in the USA. They furthermore claim that these collectors "study" and publish the material they hold which "advances our knowledge of the past" in some way or other not-really-explained. I was therefore taken by the fuss that is being made in US collecting circles about the publication of the eighth such publication in a series devoted to precisely this activity -"Ancient Coins in North American Collections", Only the tenth to appear since 1969 (one every four years or so - not a very good showing from 50 000 collector-scholars)"

Originally published as Greek Coins in North American Collections, Ancient Coins in North American Collections (ACNAC) systematically describes and illustrates ancient coins in significant private and institutional collections and is intended to record collections of numismatic value which are not readily accessible or are likely to be dispersed.

The titles of the eight are as follows (the breakdown in sequential numbering is as published):

Troxell, Hyla A. 1969. The Norman Davis collection. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 1. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Herbert, Kevin. 1979. The John Max Wulfing collection in Washington University. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 2. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Bishop, J. David and Holloway, R. Ross. 1981. Wheaton College collection of Greek and Roman coins. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 3. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Houghton, Arthur. 1983. Coins of the Seleucid empire from the collection of Arthur Houghton. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 4. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Waggoner, Nancy M. 1983. Early Greek coins from the collection of Jonathan P. Rosen. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 5. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Mildenberg, Leo and Hurter, Silvia. 1985. The Arthur S. Dewing collection of Greek coins. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 6, v. 1. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Mildenberg, Leo and Hurter, Silvia. 1985. The Arthur S. Dewing collection of Greek coins. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 6, v. 2. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Herbert, Kevin; assisted by Keith Candiotti. 1987. The John Max Wulfing collection in Washington University: Roman republican coins. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 7. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Hoover, Oliver. 2007. Coins of the Seleucid empire from the collection of Arthur Houghton. Part II. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 9. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Huth, Martin. 2011. Coinage of the Caravan Kingdoms: Ancient Arabian Coins from the Collection of Martin Huth. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 10. New York: American Numismatic Society.

Meshorer, Ya'akov; with Gabriela Bijovsky and Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert. 2013. Coins of the Holy Land: The Abraham and Marian Sofaer Collection at the American Numismatic Society and The Israel Museum. Volumes 1 and 2. Ancient Coins in North American Collections 8. New York: American Numismatic Society. 

Note that only two of them are actually written by  the collectors whose acquisitions is supposed to be the basis of their "research". In no way then does this series differ from monographs of coins held in public collections and certainly cannot form any kind of justification for private collecting.  Two out of fifty thousand is not really much of a showing for the consumption by 49998 US collections of all those hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of decontextualised ancient dugup coins brought into the US on the no-questions-asked market. Actually, it is a pretty pathetic showing - which shows that once again, the public are being foisted off with  a series of lies perpetuated by the coiney lobby.

Just to give a notion of the scale of this phenomenon, this is from the blurb of the latest:

The Abraham and Marian Sofaer collection consists of 4,000 coins and related objects produced by the peoples who inhabited the Holy Land from the Persian period in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE through the Crusader Kingdom in the 13th century of the modern era. Assembled over more than 30 years, the collection contains gold, silver and bronze coins of the Persians, Greeks, Samarians, Jews, Nabataeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Crusaders.

That's 4000 holes in archaeological assemblages in the so-called "Holy Land" so that one bloke can have his five minutes of bragging rights? What information was lost taking these objects out of the ground? "None" reply the coineys, but what do they know? What can any of us know about the contexts of deposition of these objects now they are anonymously in Mr Sofaer's collection?