David Knell Argues with the Flat-Earthers

David Knell seems to be losing his patience with collectors and dealers lobbyists and their attempts to bring every single discussion down to their own intellectual level of banalities and personal attacks (Saturday, 12 July 2014, ' Visit to the Flat Earth Society'). It's about the continued denial of those engaged in the trade in portable antiquities of the role of demand (of collectors) in the encouraging of looting and the attempts of collectors to blame everyone else for it instead.

In my innocence, I had thought my statement was so patently self-evident that I wasn't really expecting it to be contested. It was pretty much like saying water is wet or fire is hot. Sadly, I had not counted on the amazing logic-defying acrobatics of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (a deceptively-named lobby group for American coin dealers).

Knell has been accused of being anti-collecting, but that is far from being true. Again the Flat Earthers betray their own lack of ability to analyse texts in simple English. Knell writes:

As a former [antiquities] collector myself, I fully understand the pleasure of collecting and I firmly support its future. But it does need to be carried out thoughtfully. A denial of facts that are indeed blatantly obvious is akin to being a "flat-earther" and merely opens the hobby to scorn and ridicule. Perhaps worse still, it perpetuates a common perception of all collectors as rapacious introverts who will invent any shallow excuse to exploit the archaeological resource for their own selfish ends. Sadly, it seems the ACCG circle of coin dealers is hell-bent on doing precisely that. 

In Knell's text we find a very close dissection of the words of the coiney lobbyists and a demonstration why their protestations are not only full of deceit, but are worthless arguments. I urge anyone confused by the crap the pro-collecting lobby keep pushing out and who is still unsure what to think to read it. I also urge those who are in contact with collectors (because this blog is about them, not for them) to urge every collector out there who thinks people like Knell are wrong to provide a proper reasoned response to what Knell writes (warn them that it's more than eight sentences long). Perhaps because the task is clearly beyond the 'best minds' of the ACCG the US coin collecting community needs a new  Achilles , a new Goliath to face this David. Maybe Warren Esty, who claims to be the greatest living numismatist in Montana, or Harlan Berk who wants to punch an archaeologist.