Coiney Confusion Over Provenance

Kaleun96 Proficient Member numisforums.com 3/14/2023 seems not really to have much of a grasp what this is all about:

[...] There's only so much due diligence you can do as a buyer when the provenance is simply "form (sic) a European collection formed prior to 2005" or similar. Does that mean we should not buy a coin when the provenance is such? Or does it mean we need to use our further judgement as to whether we think it's likely the coin came from an old collection or was recently put on the market? Interestingly, if it meant we shouldn't be buying those coins, perhaps it would force auction houses to be more specific in their provenances, or more robust in their guarantees of sufficient provenance for most countries' import laws. Though I don't see this happening unless there was massive heavy-handed enforcement of consistent standards across multiple countries, which would ultimately be terrible for collectors.

1)  "Does that mean we should not buy a coin when the provenance is such?" Quite obviously, if a responsible collector wants to safeguard the hygiene of their collection, there is no way that they should buy that coin or any other antiquity without even the basic information and documentation. 

2) "Does it mean we need to use our further judgement as to whether we think it's likely the coin came from an old collection or was recently put on the market?" The "judgement" of an individual and nameless collector is worth nothing when it comes to transfer of ownership, either by sale or donation to an institution. No documentation, an ephemeral and necessarily ill-informed "judgement" is worthless.

3) "guarantees of sufficient provenance for most countries' import laws". Hmm, looking at that from a self-centred point of view. What however is at issue is the effects on the place the artefacts were taken from (the is the whole point of the 1970 UNESCO Convention - duh) . So not import law, but export.

4) "I don't see this happening unless there was massive heavy-handed enforcement of consistent standards across multiple countries", - yep, because it is 1000% clear from the repetition of this sort of claptrap from ignorant and totally self-obsessed collectors (most often from the US, UK or Germany) that collectors themselves are not going to be the motor of change, they want to stay in the nineteenth century 'stuff-the-Natives' Colonial world.

5) "which would ultimately be terrible for collectors" boo hoo. They had ample reason to sort themselves out, but failed to.