Discussion of a Recent Leu Coins Sale - Too-Shiny Tets.

DonnaML (' Grand Master and Benefactor') of a numismatic forum near you wrote (March 13 (edited))

[...] Dubious - and truly preposterous - "from an old collection" provenances are hardly limited to that company [Roma Numismatics]. On the Facebook ancient coins group, people have been ridiculing the stated provenance of a group of coins up for sale at the current Leu auction. To quote one member a couple of days ago: "Looks like the Leu auction had some decent bargains today so far. That person who formed the 'European collection formed before 2005' had quite the appetite for coins - among their many holdings were 42 shiny late type Lysimachus tets all from the same mint!. Amazing."

The subsequent conversation is entertaining; I've omitted the names of those who posted the comments: [...]
There is another one from the same hoard in the new roma numismatic as well. Will be interesting to see how many of them will pop out
Does anyone really think Leu is any better than Roma? Anyone? [...]
2005 must have been the key year! A Swiss collection, a European collection, a Bavarian collection. So many collections….[...] Someone explains why they picked 2005: 2005 is the year that Switzerland signed on to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Objects with a provenance before that date would be exempt from the Convention as far as Swiss authorities are concerned. How long before isn't the point, just "before"

It ws commented that Leu had sold a group of coins that had apparently previously been labelled the “Harshly Cleaned Collection” by the collecting community. In reality of course this probably refers to one or more hoards that had not reached the proper authorities but ended up being peddled by a dealer that had without scruples just stripped the lot chemically. And collectors were laughing about it. Here is is of note that what collectors say were coins from the same hoard split between at least two dealers, and that more are likely to surface - all of course without any information reaching the authorities or archaeologists. This is nothing but knowledge theft right out in the open.