No Honour Among Thieves

As we know, metal detector users tend in general not to be particularly skilled lingustically, whether in the written or spoken word. The reader then may not be particularly surprised by this particular egregious example from eBay found by the Rev Paul Bulgerin being offered by a seller from Wayne, PA, USA:

GREEK OR ROMAN SILVER COIN, FIND IT WITH METAL DETACTORE, FROM OVER SEE, THE SIZE OF IT THE SIZE OF HALF DOLLAR, I DIDN'T CLEEN IT THEY TOLD ME BATTER NOT TO DO, I JUST TEST THE SIDE TO NOW IT'S SILVER YOU CAN CALEEN IT IF YOU WANT TO SHOW ALL THE SILVER IN IT, I AM NOW OVER SEE SO I WILL SHIP IT WITH IXPRESS MAIL, I WILL SEND IT ANY WHERE IN THE WORLD, YOU WILL GET IT WITH SIGNATURE, 100% SILVER, I DO HAVE OTHER COIN YOU CAN SEE MY LEST, I DO PUT THE ADD EVERY TIME I FIND ONE NEW. YOU CAN C THE FIRST PIC LOOK LIKE IT'S SMALLER THAN THE 2ND BUY IT'S THE SAME COINE JUST WITH THE SCAN ONE LOOK BIGER THAN THE OTHER, IT'S THE SAME COIN FROM THE FRONT AND THE BACK.

The coin is pictured below, it sold for 47$. There is another auction ongoing at the moment from the same seller. This is described as a "roman or greek" bronze coin:

I SOLD ONE THE SAME, I HAD 2 OF THESE. THIS IS ROMAN OR GREEK COIN, I GOT FROM THE GROUND OVER SEE WITH MY METAL DETACTOR, THE SIZE OF THE QUARTER, I TRYED TO GET GOOD PIC OF IT THROW THE SCANER, I DIDN'T CLEEN THE COIN, I AM OVER SEE NOW SO I WILL SHIP IT INTERNATIONAL MAIL WITH SIGNATURE, AND SEND THE TRACK #

The same studiously laboured language. Yet the seller's feedback shows he does not have these problems with formulating a sentence in English when he is selling gold bullion, cosmetics, mp3 player or a mobile phone. The coins offered are fakes, the first is a copy of a bronze sestertius of Maximinus I, probably Bulgarian in origin, the second is a tourist souvenir fake of a Ptolemaic coin. If one looks back at the seller's feedback he has sold a number of such items as from the "Middle East". It seems from the way the seller moves to a different written style to convince people that they are what he asserts, suggests he is well aware that these are not what he says they are. When was he going "overseas" to do this metal detecting, and has he got an export licence for the proceeeds? Apart from the fact that the current no-questions-asked market allows anyone to pass themselves off as a finder and legitimate owner of an ancient object, which could in fact have come from anywhere, and which allows abuses like this. What is particularly interesting here is the social perception of the metal detectorist in Pennsylvania. Both seller and buyer expect a metal detector using artefact hunter to be semi-literate and write as though he has a total of nine months in school to his name. Even fake coin sellers are poking fun at the tekkies' spelling.