Fuzzy Thinking and Defensiveness Among the Coin Cabinets

"CPO has to wonder if the anti-collector bias of some archaeologists is motivated largely by academic snobbery" witters someone whose train of thought I long ago gave up trying to follow. Like a jerk, the lobbying-blogger cannot, however, actually point out where asking for a reading list is "academic snobbery", just contents himself with mud-throwing. There is no balance here when what I wrote comes on the back of Dealer Dave Welsh's snobbish "we was here first" post trying to make out (using the dubious evidence of a sixteenth century illustrated list of famous people) that numismatics is a discipline having "priority" over others such as archaeology. Astrology preceded astronomy, most of us accept that this does not make it a superior way to study the universe.

The fact is, the proponents of the argument that "we should give the no-questions-asked coin-trade every leeway because numismatics is a discipline with its own discrete methodology and a long tradition"  actually cannot demonstrate that there is anything like a discrete methodology for this "discipline". In fact, if the truth were known, we'd find it is practised by most of the buyers of these dugup artefacts as a form of "stamp collecting" ("got one each of 106 Roman emperors"). Nothing that the ACCG can say will disprove that, save supplying that reading list I asked for. That is not "academic snobbery", it is treating their arguments as serious ones and trying to engage with them. Is that a mistake?

But of course it is difficult to treat what this lot say with any seriousness.  Many times I have dissected that phrase of theirs: "the anti-collector bias of some archaeologists" and shown it to be a gross misrepresentation, but they regardless persist in using it. I'll say it again in as few words as possible (watch the lips): the problem is not collecting itself, but the way the collecting is done. Simple. That is not "bias", it is a fact. It is not against collecting, it is against the widespread carefree and  irresponsible no-questions-asked attitude of most collectors and almost all dealers to the acquisition of objects taken from a fragile and finite resource. In England and (for the moment) Wales, a huge government scheme is working away to promote responsible artefact collecting by preserving and recording findspot information. The ACCG note it and apparently approve of it, but fall well short of advocating emulating it in the practice of collecting and trade by its members. It is not "academic snobbery" to point that out, but it is anti-academism and unscholarly of the dugup collectors of the ACCG and others who continue to ignore such calls. As a "discipline" coin-collecting-numismatics lacks not only a defined and discrete methodology but an semblance of a debate on responsibility and ethics. Pointing that out is not "academic snobbery" on my part, it is a sad fact that observation of their activities will reveal about the sad little mud-slinging men who fondle coins for personal entertainment and profit.