DALLAS, TEXAS - Former Frito-Lay International CEO and rare-coin supercollector Jim O’Neal is featured on the cover of the premiere issue of Heritage Magazine for the Intelligent Collector.

The quarterly magazine, hitting mailboxes this month, targets readers pursuing the world’s most valuable collectibles, with stories on Hollywood memorabilia (a 1934 “The Black Cat” movie poster that fetched more than $250,000); White House mementos (jewelry being auctioned by former first daughter-in-law Sharon Bush); Civil War collectibles (a sword belonging to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant that sold for $1.67 million); and sports memorabilia (a Lou Gehrig game jersey is expected to sell for up to $400,000).

“The collectibles market is growing at a phenomenal rate, with everything from fine art to comics growing as legitimate investments,” says editorial director Hector Cantu. “We’ll be providing collectors with solid advice, sales information and interviews so they can make smart decisions when it comes to selling and buying the most sought-after collectibles.”
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Last week, after a two-day euphoria over lower interest rates, stocks retreated, oil broke through $81/barrel, and the dollar sank, reaching parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time in decades.

Don’t be surprised if you start seeing TV commercials urging you to “Buy Gold!,” insisting inflation is back with a vengeance. Put your wallet away for a minute.

That piece of advice doesn’t come from me, although I agree. It comes from folks who would be delighted to sell you gold: the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a non-profit organization representing rare coin dealers, which recently issued a consumer alert.

European Union officials have been accused of “political geography” after Turkey, but not the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, disappeared from a map of Europe designed for new euro coins.

A common design for the “tails side” of euro coins is to be rolled out in 2008 with an updated graphic showing an enlarged EU and new countries, such as Cyprus, that are joining the single currency.

Papers given to Euro-MPs under Brussels open information rules show that the European Commission proposed a standard format map of Europe extending as far as the Caspian Sea and including Turkey.

But, following the intervention of unnamed national governments, Ankara was short-changed in the final design as Cyprus was moved hundreds of miles west, to rest near Crete, while Turkey was cut from the map altogether. (more…)

Nathan Elkins’—”Why coins matter”—is touted as a “special feature” on the web site of Saving Antiquities for Everyone (http://www.savingantiquities.org/feature.php). Mr. Elkins, in what can only be described as a tyro condemnation of the ancient coin market, stitches together a series of disjointed and unrelated points that leave the reader struggling for a thread. His arguments, in the best of cases, lack plausibility. More often, they are incoherent.

A bold sidebar anchors the lead-in with the bizarre quote: “We cannot think that ancient coins are less significant than looted Greek vases…” Elkins suggests that archaeological context trumps any other value of an object. This thinking is merely a precurser to the irrationality that follows. Supremacy of context is of course the trite and time worn position of radical archaeologists that has all but faded into obscurity since cultural property nationalists began screaming for repatriations. If context is the most significant aspect of an artifact, then the location of any artifact once it is out of the ground is really irrelevant. Why should Italy or Greece, for example, care where an object is stored today if its “archaeological” context is unknown? The obvious answer is that cultural property nationalists do NOT value context over possession, nor do a host of other interest groups including museums and collectors. Even archaeologists seem hung up on possession. Every suggestion that surplus common artifacts from a dig be sold to collectors is quickly rejected even though the objects have all been recorded and studied and are sometimes even earmarked for destruction. The supremacy of context is an argument whose day has come and gone. Yes, coins are important when found in an archaeological context. They are equally important without any context whatever, as any experienced and knowledgeable numismatist knows. (more…)