Friday Retrospect: Coins of Zenobia and the Syrian War

The recent Wall Street Journal article on online sales of undocumented antiquities (Georgi Kantchev, 'Buyer Beware: Looted Antiquities Flood Online Sites Like Amazon, Facebook', Wall Street Journal Nov. 1, 2017) mentions a study by Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society, who found that between 2010 and 2015, there was a:

'significant surge' on the global market in the number of coins minted in the reigns of Zenobia, a third-century queen of the Syria-based Palmyrene Empire, and her son. That surge coincides with the start of the Syrian war in 2011 and the rise of various terror groups that have been active in the country. That is “something that most coin collectors and many dealers in the U.S. are largely unaware of,” Ms. Wartenberg Kagan says in the study.

For those who may have missed the article, the text is here: https://eca.state.gov/files/bureau/wartenbergsyria-coincollecting.pdf