Tuesday, 7 March 2023

Roma Numismatics and Gaza Hoard Coins

 

I have written several times here on the Gaza Hoard found in Gaza in 2013 and 2017. This contained many Alexander tetradrachms and some exceptional decadrachms and these coins have been smuggled out to Israel and were in the hands of at least two antiquities dealers, a Palestinian from Gaza living in UAE and a well-known Jordanian-Canadian trafficker (convicted in USA) who has collaborated with Roma Numismatics. In recent years a number of these decadrachms were auctioned by Roma Numismatics with bogus provenances such as "from a private Canadian collection" or similar vague and unsupported statements. It is reported that the house of the Palestinian trafficker in Gaza has been raided lately by the police and they were able to recover a lot of coins (tetradrachms and allegedly some decadrachms) from the hoard that had not yet been smuggled to Israel. We now read in the leaked court documents on numismatic forums that according to the authorities, the UK dealer admitted that the collection histories of the decadrachms that ended in the share of the Jordanian-Canadian person, and were auctioned by Roma Numismatics, were fake.



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