Coins – Illicit Cultural Property

The Weiss Case: Pleading Guilty to Getting Duped

Two “genuine fake” ancient coins

My grandfather once had a shiny piece of jewelry (I think it was a cubic zirconia pinky ring) which he would describe as a “genuine fake diamond ring”. He would say it fast enough that if you weren’t listening close you thought he would just say ‘genuine’.

Early this year a prominent physician, Arnold Peter C. Weiss, was arrested and charged with dealing in recently looted coins. Last week Weiss pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted criminal possession of the coins. He thought they had been recently excavated. But they were in fact modern forgeries—a predictable consequence of not asking enough questions about the history of these objects before their acquisition. Unlike Charles Stanish, who is heartened by these fakes which don’t cause the looting of a site, I think these fakes do pollute our understanding of the past and defraud our collective cultural heritage.

Chasing Aphrodite reports that as part of the plea agreement reached with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, the defendant must serve 70 hours of community service, forfeit 23 other ancient coins seized, and pay a $3,000 fine. But he has some writing to do as well:

The court also required Weiss, the former treasurer of the American Numismatic Society, to write a detailed article in the society’s magazine detailing the widespread practice of dealing in coins with unclear ownership histories. It will describe the corresponding threat to the archaeological record and propose solutions for reforming the coin trade. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said, “Thanks to today’s disposition, the article to be written by the defendant for a coin trade magazine will raise needed awareness about unprovenanced coins, and will promote responsible collecting among numismatists.”

It should be a real page turner. I suspect Matthew Bogdanos, the Manhattan assistant DA had much to do with that writing assignment.

Paul Barford notes of the fakes:

Those coins always looked to me suspect, too fussy and the Akragas looked like it was a copy of another in a published collection, but who am I to question what the US authorities are up to, eh? (back in January, I was asked to keep my suspicions to myself, so did, but glad to see I am not going crazy). Anyway it turns out that those “priceless ancient coins” “weren’t worth a wooden nickel”.

Rick St. Hilaire thinks this case may be the start of increased use of state laws to police the illicit antiquities trade:

Indeed, all fifty states have receiving stolen property laws on the books, which can be applied in cases where a person is in criminal possession of stolen cultural property. The states also have “attempt” laws, which would cover a person’s attempt to possess stolen cultural property or possession of forged cultural property believed to be authentic. Beyond these statutes, the states maintain consumer protection laws with applicable penalties to guard against the appearance of fraudulent and stolen items in the marketplace. The states also have nonprofit enforcement statutes that may be applied to specific cultural institutions or boards of directors that acquire illegal art, archaeological finds, or ethnological artifacts.

Let’s hope so. But the same obstacle to state prosecutions exists for federal prosecutions as well. The trade makes it terribly difficult to gather sufficient evidence to establish wrongdoing in an anonymous trade. Bogdanos has been looking hard for a dodgy antiquities dealer to prosecute since the Baghdad museum looting. He has one now. But Weiss was duped by the under-regulated antiquities trade. Perhaps that notion will cause him to sit down to write his assignment with some real vigor (Peter, if you are reading, I’m happy to read a first draft).

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Nine Double Eagle Coins

Roy Langbord discovered in 2003 that his family had 9 of these rare double eagle coins locked away in a safe-deposit box:

The famous “double eagles” from that year were never officially released by the government. Only a few had ever made their way out of federal vaults, and only one had ever been sold publicly, in 2002. The price: $7.6 million. And there were nine more of them in the safe-deposit box. But after the Langbord family took the coins to the United States Mint to be authenticated in 2004, they got a rude surprise. The Mint said the coins were genuine and kept them. The government claims that they are government property stolen from the Mint, most likely in the 1930s, by Mr. Langbord’s grandfather, Israel Switt, a Philadelphia jewelry dealer. The Langbords went to court and recently won an important ruling. A United States District Court judge has given the government until the end of the month either to give back the coins or go back to court to prove that they were in fact stolen by Mr. Switt, a daunting task after three-quarters of a century. Nearly a half-million 1933 double eagles were minted before President Franklin D. Roosevelt, shifting the nation away from the gold standard, issued an executive order that made owning large amounts of gold bullion and coins illegal. Two of the coins went to the Smithsonian Institution, and almost all the rest were melted down.

The Federal government believes the coins were stolen, and it seems unlikely these coins ever found their way to the marketplace legitimately, but the government will have to prove these coins were stolen, 75 years after they were ordered to be melted down.

John Schwartz, Rare Coins: Family Treasure or Ill-Gotten Goods? [New York Times, Sep. 15, 2009].

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

China’s CPAC Request Granted

China’s request for import restrictions of certain classes of China’s antiquities has finally been granted. The Memorandum of Understanding is here, while the State Department Press Release is here. Now prohibited, unless accompanied by a Chinese export license will be “archaeological material originating in China and representing China’s cultural heritage from the Paleolithic Period through the end of the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 907), and of monumental sculpture and wall art at least 250 years old; including categories of metal, ceramic, stone, textiles, other organic material, glass, and painting”.

Randy Kennedy has an overview for the New York Times. Professor Patty Gerstenblith thinks the decision “is a very appropriate way for the State Department to have applied the statute and the statutory requirements to China’s request”.

James Lally, a New York dealer in Asian art was not quite as impressed, “It’s going to have a terrible effect on efforts to encourage new students to study Asian art and on collectors and patrons to become involved in the field … They’ll say, ‘Well, I’ll just go to contemporary art or I’ll support the symphony.’ It sends the wrong signal.”

Peter Tompa has a thoughtful criticism on his blog as well,

I would, however, echo [other’s] concerns about fair enforcement, particularly when it comes to coins. Indeed, many Chinese coins of the types covered under the agreement have so little monetary value that it makes little sense for importers to go through the time and effort to secure the necessary certifications for licit import. For example, at the CPAC hearing in February 2005, I passed around a Han Dynasty cash coin from the 1st c. BC (bought for $2.25) and a Tang Dynasty cash coin c. 618-907 AD (bought for $8.00).

Such a problem presents some very difficult regulatory challenges, and goes I think to the heart of how we define cultural heritage or property. I don’t envy the task of ICE agents, who are now charged with making sure these very small objects are not imported into the US.

China has created a large heritage bureaucracy which does allow the purchase and sale of antiquities, but the government has right of first refusal for all of these objects. There is also a complicated ratings system, overseen by a government official in relics shops, which determines what is too important to sell, and what is not. The system has been criticized for its potential for abuse, though what heritage policy in any nation isn’t.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Antiquities Arrest in Greece

The AP is reporting today that 2,308 ancient coins have been seized and a 70-year-old barber arrested in northern Greece. The coins mainly date from the Roman and Hellenistic peroid.

Several coins bore the heads of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian warrior king, and his father King Philip.

The man was arrested Sunday near the town of Veroia, 490 kilometers (305 miles) north of Athens. He has been charged with antiquity smuggling and taken into police custody.

Police said they searched the man’s home and unexpectedly discovered the coins after he had been identified by two juvenile robbery suspects as the person who bought their stolen mobile phones and other items.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Coins, Country Houses and Law Enforcement

Karin Goodwin has a piece in The Herald today titled Masterpiece Detectives: inside the investigator’s art. It details the theft of 2000 coins from Lord Stewartby recently, and covers all the big thefts from Madonna of the Yarnwinder to the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft. She also talks with the former middleman for stolen art “ArtHostage”, as well as Dick Ellis the former head of the Met art and antiques squad. Here is an excerpt:

Lord Stewartby’s coin collection was said by experts to be unique. The former Tory minister started it when he was just four years old and, more than 60 years later, he had amassed almost 2000 coins, dating back as far as 1136 and valued at more than £500,000.

They included a silver penny minted under the reign of Robert the Bruce and others struck under James I and II. In short, it was the most historically important collection in Britain. A leading numismatist, the 72-year-old peer had retired in May and, anticipating time to concentrate on research, had taken his collection home to Broughton Green, the house in the Borders where 39 Steps author John Buchan once lived, to be catalogued. But it seems he was not the only person attracted to rare coins. Between June 6 and 7, while he and his wife were on holiday, the house was broken into and the collection taken. “It was such a great shock,” he said at the time.

The £50,000 reward he has put up for information leading to its safe return speaks volumes about his determination to get the collection back. That means a select band of individuals may be wondering if the phone will ring requesting their expertise. A group of former senior police officers – most of whom worked for the Metropolitan Police’s art and antiques unit – loss adjustors and international data-base co-ordinators are the UK’s art detectives.

For the most part they insist that criminals behind art thefts are not really any different from any other. They reject outright too, the myth of a Dr No-type figure sitting in his nuclear bunker surrounded by precious masterpieces and fine antiques.

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But it’s certainly big business. Internationally, an estimated 10,000 works – collectively worth billions of pounds – are taken from museums, private collections and country homes every year. These supplement the catalogue of the already missing, which runs to some 479 Picassos, 347 Miros, 290 Chagalls, 225 Dalis, 196 Durers, 190 Renoirs, 168 Rembrandts and 150 Warhols. Internationally, the most famous thefts include that of 13 works, including a Vermeer and a Rembrandt and collectively worth $300m, from the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston.

Mark Dalrymple is credited as having “founded the Council for the Prevention of Art Theft (Copat) in the late 1980s… It resulted in the abolition of the market ouvert principle, and, for a while at least, better co-operation from dealers.” The market overt rule had long been criticized as a “medieval relic” and I think the last straw was the theft of valuable works from Barristers at Lincoln’s Inn. A Reynolds and a Gainsborough portrait were stolen, then sold at Bermondsey for £ 145. The Barristers had to purchase the work back because the good faith purchaser had good title under the market overt exception to the common law rule nemo dat quod non habet (meaning he who has no title passes no title). Professor Norman Palmer wrote briefly about the event in an editorial here.

Otherwise its an interesting overview, which highlights the difficulty in protecting remote country houses and garnering enough law enforcement resources. The Met’s art and antiques squad has only 4 officers, and those are in jeopardy of being halved.

Error:

I misread the source article and made a pretty obvious mistake. ArtHostage, the former stolen art handler, was of course not credited with helping to bring about the end of the market overt principle. Rather it was Mark Dalrymple. Many thanks to ArtHostage himself for pointing out the error. I have corrected the relevant text in the first and second-to-last paragraphs. You can read his thoughts here.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

The United States Introduces Import Restrictions for Cypriot Coins

The Cultural Property Advisory Committee has recommended, and the State Department has issued an import ban on Cypriot coins. Here is an excerpt from the Federal register notice outlining the new import restrictions:

Coins of Cypriot Types
Coins of Cypriot types made of gold, silver, and bronze including but not limited to:

1. Issues of the ancient kingdoms of Amathus, Kition, Kourion, Idalion, Lapethos, Marion, Paphos, Soli, and Salamis dating from the end of the 6th century B.C. to 332 B.C.

2. Issues of the Hellenistic period, such as those of Paphos, Salamis, and Kition from 332 B.C. to c. 30 B.C.

3. Provincial and local issues of the Roman period from c. 30 B.C. to 235 A.D. Often these have a bust or head on one side and the image of a temple (the Temple of Aphrodite at Palaipaphos) or statue (statue of Zeus Salaminios) on the other.

Jeremy Kahn of the New York Times has a summary in today’s paper here. The new restriction is noteworthy because the Cultural Property Advisory Committee has never placed restrictions on ancient coins before. However, no request for restrictions by another nation has never been refused, so this was the likely outcome. To trigger a recommendation for import restrictions, a source nation must show it is working to police its archaeological sites, and the ancient sites are in danger of being pillaged. It seems Cyprus was able to make that claim, though we won’t be able to know the actual deliberations which went on because the deliberations of the CPAC are secret.

Cyprus’ ambassador Andreas Kakouris said in the NYT article “We are very pleased coins have been added to this … Coins constitute an inseparable part of our own cultural heritage, and the pillage they are subjected to is the same as other archaeological material.”

Representing the other side though is Peter Tompa who said “This decision shows that the Department of State is putting the narrow interest of the cultural bureaucracies of foreign states and the archaeological community over those ordinary Americans who believe that collecting increases appreciation of the past and helps preserve artifacts.”

It’s a difficult issue I think. The work of numismatists has helped archaeologists to be able to date their finds. However, ancient coins are found in the same areas as other archaeological materials. I argue in my thesis that the bilateral implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention which the US and Switzerland have undertaken can be quite effective, and at least gives a voice to the interests of antiquities dealers. They may not think their views are taken into account in the CPAC, but it is a much stronger voice than they have in other nations. The restrictions are limited as well, they extend for five years only, and have to be renewed.

In my view the solution is a compromise which strongly restricts the trade in the most important objects, but allows a limited and licit trade in surplus and other objects. To fund these efforts I propose antiquities leasing and other initiatives. The magic bullet which could end all of these problems though is the publication of detailed provenances for all sales. Unfortunately the current climate does not promote the sharing of that information.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Easiest Thefts Ever?

Thieves made off with $4 million in rare coins last week. This is the second year running that the Florida International Numismatist Convention has been hit. One might imagine that these collectors and dealers would be a little more careful. This year, a handful of masked robbers stole the coins at knifepoint. Last year they merely broke into the cars in a parking lot and made off with $450,000 in loot.

The recent robbery took place in the valet parking line at the Peabody Hotel. Some of the most valuable coins taken include coins like this one, dating from 1843 and President Tyler. David Nishimimura points out that perhaps the dealers should have used an armored car service. Once again, authorities do not know how the objects will be sold, as they are extremely rare, and would probably be quite difficult to get rid of. The art isn’t in the theft, it’s in the selling. There remains a healthy debate about whether these kind of coins rise to the level of cultural property. Though they are valuable, they are not particularly rare.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com