Where do these coins Blong?

Focus on the CCPIA: Where do these coins Blong (sic)?

http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/12/focus-on-ccpia-where-do-these-coins.html

by Paul Barford

Thomas Albert ... reckons that restricting the import into the US market of coins that lack documentation of lawful export is "insane" (coins circulated in the past, don't ya' know) "I do not think - looking at his analogies - that he has quite grasped what the MOU is about

"The logic used in this MOU is flawed and smells of corruption and greed of the few. The question is, who is getting paid off? The agency with political favors? Individuals standing to profit in the future? Or is it an effort to limit the desemination of knowledge, so over time people forget a little more of the real history because a few will totally control the content and distribution of whatever they deem as valued knowledge? We went to war with England to gain our liberty, freedom and our rights to know and grow as a nation. In one fell swoop, you have laid waste to those very ideals."

...

" ... and I thought they went to war in effect to avoid paying King George their taxes. It turns out they went to war so their descendants can bring shame on their nation by standing up for their rights to continue collecting smuggled coins from other countries. Pathetic."

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> and I thought they went to war in effect to avoid paying King George their taxes.

Which extremely inaccurate perspective is entirely consistent with archaeo-Goebbels' views regarding everything other than archaeology.

> It turns out they went to war so their descendants can bring shame on their nation by standing up for their rights to continue collecting smuggled coins from other countries.

Their descendants have every right under US law to stand up for their longstanding and legitimate rights to continue collecting ancient coins licitly imported from other countries. Archaeo-Goebbels however does not recognize US law or its foundation the Constitution, instead preferring to base his views upon his own edicts from his throne of magical self-declared moral authority in far-off, cloud-borne Wolkenkuckucksheim.

> Pathetic.

A much too favorable description of archaeo-Goebbels, his utterly insignificant (and brief) career as an archaeologist, his malicious and evil views regarding collecting, and every other twisted, deranged aspect of this embittered failure's miserable and impoverished existence as a cab driver (and occasional document translator) in balmy Warsaw Poland -- where the temperature is presently 37 degrees Fahrenheit.

Who say dat?

Who Said That?

http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/12/who-said-that.html

by Paul Barford

Who wrote this on Tim Haines' Yahoo "Ancient Artifacts" discussion list, ostensibly for responsible collectors? Three guesses:

"Edgar, You see clearly, and very far ahead. I am entirely in agreement with your remarks below. I would urge every listmember to study them carefully, because the archaeologists really and truly do want to end private collecting of antiquities, and if collectors continue to delude themselves about this they will follow in the footsteps of those German Jews who after 1935 kept saying "It can't happen here." Well it did happen to them, and it will happen to antiquities collectors also unless they finally wake up and start to fight back -- as coin collectors are now doing."

Note how, once again in the ACCG rhetoric, the opponents of the no-questions-asked trade in antiquities are likened to Nazis, and the collector of such items are depicted as God's Chosen People. Frankly I think such trivialisation by this [multiple and unjustifiable pejorative terms deleted] of the European Jewish Holocaust most distasteful, and un-American. Likening the CCPIA on documentation of lawful export of antiquities to the Nuremburg Laws is simply the symptom of a sick mind who simply does not know when to stop.

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Archaeo-Goebbels is correct in observing that there is indeed a sick, deranged and destructive mind involved in this, who simply does not know when to stop. He does not however correctly identify its possessor, whom he could easily identify simply by looking in a mirror.

Sacra Archaeologia et sacerdotes suae

There is a very interesting thread in Moneta-L at the moment:

Message #102012

Harry,

Yes, this is the point I've been trying to make. That we have to stop letting the antis define the issue in terms of 'looting' and 'evil collectors' and expose it for what it really is, the growing efforts by governments everywhere to take away more and more individual freedoms, most often on the basis of manufactured issues of 'political correctness'.

In the case of antiquities and ancient coins there is a peculiar quasi religious zeal to the antis' crusade. They would have everyone believe that even common everyday pottery and coins from ancient times have some sacred quasi religious nature that makes them completely off limits to lowly ordinary people, and that they are only to be held and examined in inner sanctums by the high priests of archaeology, and only these properly sanctified priests have the right to handle such artifacts and only they are qualified to interpret them to us lowly commoners but we must never touch them on pain of violating the commandments.

And that all ancient objects are so sacred that no matter how many of them there are they all must be confiscated from the impure hands of the unwashed and stored forever safely away from our impure possessive desires to share in the common history of mankind. Essentially it's an attempt by governments to expropriate and control history. The effect is to take history away from us and make us more and more dependent on government control of the present.

It is certainly a very strange turn of events for a coin originally used to purchase a loaf of bread!

And isn't it interesting that if all antiquities and coins are off the market the only things left to buy are modern consumer goods where the profits go into the pockets of big business instead of to other people?

Edgar

To which Robert Tye replied:

Message #102013

Hello Edgar

<

unwashed>>

This is a very accurate summation of the situation, and I can give a rather good illustration of how it works in practice.

Some years back I became troubled that an archaeological dig on the West Coast of the Outer Hebrides was damaging the remains of an iron age broch.

So I designed a kind of sea wall to protect the site. Actually, it was a kind of modern reproduction of the part of the broch that had earlier washed away, with a reinforced concrete skirt hidden below the mock up stonework. I drew the plans myself on my kitchen table, and raised the funds myself, about GBP 12K, to get the work done.

While the work was actually being done, the chief archaeologist on the dig stepped in and stopped the contractor keying the new stonework into the ancient stonework.

Let me explain that the archaeologist only visited the site in summer for a few of weeks, and it was impossible to explain to him the stupidity of his position.

He was not going to have his sacred ancient monument contaminated by have our modern repro. stone work actually touching it – so a gap of about half a meter was left between the old and the new stonework.

There was a force 14 gale the following winter, the new sea wall stood firm, but the sea went straight into the gap, and tore away about 3 metres of the ancient wall – maybe ten tons of big granite blocks.

The archaeologist has since got his professorship and I see him regularly on TV.

I guess most viewers believe the things he says.

I don't.

Rob Tye

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This is getting into very interesting subjects. I will follow this thread, and recommend that all collectors also do so.