Some of the more radical members of the archaeological community have claimed that the ancient coin market is saturated with coins fresh out of the ground, ripped illicitly from archaeological sites and spirited to America by a seedy underground of Mafia and/or Terrorist operatives. Of course, collectors and dealers know that is pure rubbish and the sort of thing that you would read in a sensationalist tabloid newspaper. The number of coins that have been bought and sold legitimately on the world market over the past 600 years is staggering. It literally runs into the millions of specimens.

In the 19th century, the market was frequently reported on in the Royal Numismatic Society’s journal, the Numismatic Chronicle. Each issue of the NC lists the sale of collections of ancient coins with numbers often in the tens of thousands of pieces offered. This went on systematically for the better part of a century as the huge collections of European nobility amassed in the 15th through 18th centuries were gradually dispersed. Where did all those coins go to? Quite simply into other collections, and other collections and other collections. The typical ancient coin in the market today has passed through the hands of scores of collectors.

The definition of “illicit” is subjective and prone to distortion. Collectors might say, for example, that coins recently removed from a country where the removal is illegal are illicit. Archaeologists would say that any coin lacking a recorded provenance dating to before 1970 is illicit. There is a wide gulf between the two views. eBay offerings have frequently been criticized by some archaeologists as being “illicit” because they generally lack provenance. That does not at all mean they were removed illegally from any country, nor that they have entered the market recently. The fact that a coin has recently been cleaned only proves that it has recently been cleaned, not that it recently came out of the ground and was cleaned.

Pierre Monney, a collector from Switzerland tells a fascinating story about an anonymous coin that he bought on eBay. It turns out that this inconspicuous coin, a worn and holed tetradrachm of Mithradates VI, not only has a provenance, it has an illustrious history of being sold in the Naville V sale of 1823. It was published in Waddington as Ex: Grand Duke of Russia collection and was subsequently in the Bertier de LaGarde collection. The story of how Pierre Monney discovered this is very interesting and the link above will take you there.

The point worth mentioning here is that many coins do have a provenance, it simply is not recorded because no such requirement ever existed. To try to impose a requirement now for documentation of provenance would be a task beyond imagination and well beyond the ability of collectors to accomplish with any degree of thoroughness. In any case, the imposition of provenance requirements is a draconian shift of the burden of proof. It is, in the American legal system, the presumption of innocence that prevails. Forcing collectors to prove that any given coin is not illicit places the burden of proof on the accused and is a terrible precedent that would undermine the basic principles of freedom.

Republished with Permission from Wayne Sayles Blog - Ancient Coin Collecting