The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 13, March 26, 2006, Article 21

EDITORIAL PROTESTS RETURN OF COIN CACHE TO SAUDI ARABIA

Last week we mentioned the cache of ancient coins seized from
a Florida man and returned to Saudi Arabia.

A March 21, 2006 editorial in the New York Sun asks "Why is
the American government using money it extracts from American
taxpayers to enforce other countries' misguided cultural
patrimony laws?"

"Now that the Italians have managed to raid the Metropolitan
Museum of Art under Mussolini's patrimony laws, who's going
to be next? How about Saudi Arabia? If you think that's
far-fetched, feature what happened earlier this month, when
federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers leaned
on a Florida man and forced him to surrender to the Saudis a
trove of medieval Islamic coins he'd found in the Red Sea and
saved and was preparing to preserve."

The private collector was trying to dig up information on how
best to conserve his finds in preparation for finding a willing
buyer. In other words, the activities of this individual
illuminate that a private market for antiquities provides
incentives to care for those antiquities. The big fear now
shouldn't be whether other private individuals will join in
the trade of antiquities such as these coins, but rather whether
the government has provided a disincentive to preserve valuable
objects out of fear that doing so might draw the unwanted gaze
of cultural enforcers."

To read the complete editorial, see Full Story

To view images of the coins, see: Coin Images

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

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