Coin Dealers, Evasive and Tiresome.

Wayne Sayles really seems to be losing it, and coming across as a bitter, cantankerous and quarrelsome old man at that. He snidely suggests on the Bible History Daily blog that Nathan Elkins, responding to comments there on his recent BAR article on preserving provenance of dugup artefacts should be, for some reasons, "peer reviewed by a committee". What? He also calls other people's responses "tirades" and a "flame war". Those who wonder if one can trust the word of a coin dealer might like to check the rational points made countering the arguments of the dealers' lobby in the whole thread above that remark for the veracity of that statement. It seems to me that collectors of dugup antiquities relish playing the victim, and have very thin skins concerning rational discussion of issues which they see as some kind of violence done on their preconceptions. Pathetic little people. They are the ones complaining nobody wants to sit down with them to discuss the issues. First I think they need to face up to their own shortcomings.

A good example of this is when Sayles (once again, even though he has been shown on a number of occasions to be misleading us), denies that the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild is a lobby on behalf of coin dealers. He disingenuously pretends he does not "even know of any such organization". He insists that the website of the ACCG says it is run by collectors for collectors, and so should be considered a collectors' lobby group. Is that what Mr Sayles means?

Nonetheless, as anyone can see, the ACCG very clearly, both in the structure of its organization and in the focus of its lobbying activities (and the non-functioning of all the rest of the things it says on its website the ACCG will be doing) quite clearly IS a dealers' lobbying group. There really is no denying that, but in the light of Mr Sayles' persistence ion trying to deny what anyone can see, consider how more open-eyed readers might like to treat things said by US coin dealers.  [Let's also see the results of the recent election of officers, why if  this is a collectors' organization are only dealers and those professionally involved in the numismatic trade and publishing and dealers' wives being nominated for office? How much of a mandate does that give them to speak for "collectors"?]

Sayles goes on to accuse Elkins of  misstating  "the ACCG position on import restrictions". He then continues himself totally to misstate what Elkins said before contradicting it. What Elkins said was however entirely in accord with what Sayles later asserted was the case:

[the ACCG] vociferously and aggressively opposes any legal measures aimed at protecting historical and archaeological sites from looting and smuggling when it might also affect anything but a 100% “free trade” in ancient coins.

Which you may compare with Sayles' response, Sayles is confirming what Elkins had in fact said, but the dealer tries to make an argument out of it. Again, please take that into account when assessing anything a coin dealer may say.

This is more of the continual evasive construction of straw man arguments which the coin dealers' lobby hopes  to derail discussions. They just cannot stop themselves and focus on core issues, they always want to try and lead any discussion off onto some sidetrack, one which is focussed on them, their needs and how much everyone wants to conspire against and victimise them. Here too. Note that the topic of discussion on this thread was the need for preserving provenance with reference to coins in the context of "Biblical archaeology". Instead of discussing that and applying their professed interest in studying the past to that question, all the slimy and tiresome ACCG lobby (Tompa, Sayles) want to do is force a detailed discussion of one piece of the US legislation (CCPIA).