Trinity Antiques, Colchester UK.

Trinity Antiques in Colchester, Essex (leesleep 10444) is a brick and mortar shop next to an antiquarian bookshop that I used to visit in the 1970s, and near a coin shop - there were two of them, both gone now - where I first encountered metal detecting finds on sale, a long time ago.  This is where my interest in the whole issue began. The seller is now on eBay and says:

We are one of the largest Antiquity Dealers selling on Ebay, with over 35 years of experience in the market. We specialise in Roman, Celtic, Saxon, viking and Medieval antiquities, jewellery and coins. Our large purchasing power enables us to offer high quality items at very reasonable prices. Please View Our Website For More Collection www.trinityantiques.co.uk

This seller has vague collecting histories for his stuff, such as "European collection 1970s" (Roman silver ring), 'UK Art Market' (complete red-slipped Roman pot - from a grave? He's got a lot of these, but they are not Romano-British pottery). There's a Roman bust from a tripod table (he says), that was: 'Ex Europea[n] Private Collection Acquired Early 1900s', and where was it since then? Two broken off patera handles were in a 'uk collection 1980s', and is that the same 'uk collection' that had an early Byzantine bronze bread stamp (the sort of thing one might expect to be coming out of looted town sites in Bulgaria, for example)? Then we have a truly execrable 'cylinder seal' that is too-vaguely 'Ex Private European Collection'. The same collecting history is given for another two, one bad, but the other one....  . If they came from the same collection, the owner had no eye at all.

There is no detail in any of the descriptions, most of which are little more than labels for the two sketchy photos (rarely three). For example, there is no  information about any basal inscription on a purported Middle Kingdom scarab and the "fabulous" piece of something described both as schist and "Terracota Stucco" (sic) that the seller says is a "Gandhara frieze" (unlikely, looking at its form) is without any kind of provenance. Sadly the other Gandhara item of "terracotta stucco" that he has looks like it is actually authentic - so the fact that it has no provenance at all makes one suspicious where that come from and when. There is no substantive (or substantiable) information in any of the 'collecting histories' I looked at, why not?