Coinshop Proprietors React to their Disappearing Influence

The coiney reaction to the passing by the US House of Representatives of HR 1493 is pretty predictable: "Any coordination efforts will again ignore the concerns of collectors and the small businesses of the numismatic and antiquities trade.  Instead, the same insiders associated with the archaeological lobby who already dominate things will again be given free reign to help call the shots" complains a lobbyist for those collectors and shopkeepers. But then, the behaviour of precisely those lobbyists and those who sponsor them demonstrates with utmost clarity that coordination of efforts to protect and preserve international cultural property from the effects of the no-questions-asked commerce in it is actually the last thing they want and are capable of participating in. The results of them alienating themselves from the heritage debate can only be that they will increasingly find themselves outside the processes which the rest of us want to see succeeding.They and their tactics for 'promoting' their interests not only make dugup antiquity collectors their own worst enemies, but also make them the enemies of all who care about protection of the archaeological record and heritage from looters and smugglers.