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| Now you see it, but in a moment you will not, antiquities laundering |
What is a "reputable source" that cannot provide any paperwork to support their freely-given verbal assurances that all and any unpapered dugup antiquities in their stockroom is kosher? Is that a "reputation" for "not having been caught out yet (because he and his mates have got rid of all the paperwork and the trail has gone cold)"?Personally I would hope there is a less violent way that we can resolve this issue without busting into the shops of antquities dealers, holding them at gunpoint and confiscating their hard drives. There must be a more civilized way than such Wild West tactics.
The only dealers I have heard of as having a 'bad reputation' among collectors (and I spend a lot of time monitoring what they say and write) are those that sell fakes as authentic antiquities. Mr Tompa can correct me I am sure if I have missed the name of any specific dealer who has a bad reputation among collectors in general for selling authentic but considered dodgily-sourced artefacts. What do we mean by that "reputable source"?
"it is possible that the coins were for sale and went into the market". Indeed, and the person who bought them, no doubt, believed they were sold to him by a "reputable dealer" who could well also have belonged to one of a number of professional' numismatic associations which tout their ethical codes but do zero monitoring of their members' conduct - including those Mr Tompa lobbies for. So how can we tell?
How in the actual (not imagined) manner in which this opaque and secretive market operates can we prevent items like those coins being sold - in the absence of an alert like the one for these four objects based on records obtained by a government-sponsored raiding party breaking into a guy's house, killing one of the dealers involved in the chain and stealing his computer? How else would the market be alerted to the origins of these four antiquities - no different from the hundreds that 'surface' without papers on the international market weekly?
[And this is the three cups game in action:
posted on You Tube by videomarketing2012 ]
Paul, your post comments....."The only dealers I have heard of as having a 'bad reputation' among collectors (and I spend a lot of time monitoring what they say and write) are those that sell fakes as authentic antiquities. "
ReplyDeleteI would say that what you have been hearing runs pretty parallel to our own research.
ARCA has many more notes on dealers that other dealers have criticized or complained about as flogging fakes than dealers criticizing members of their trade for dabbling in or actively being involved in promoting illicit trafficking. Usually when statements are made, it is reflective only on specific cases, like Khouli, or Becchina or Symes, that have faced the courts for their misdeeds. Sometimes when an offending dealer runs afoul of his own member association, they switch to another one or omit the dealer association emblem from their sales going forward.