UNESCO "Experts" get it Wrong

One of the doyens of numismatic scholarship, Wayne Sayles has caught so-called UNESCO "experts" out in another of their anti-collecting lies ("Leave it to the Experts" December 28, 2015).

Where in the world does the press come up with their "experts" on cultural property matters? The latest brazen show of ignorance appears in a citation by "leading world museums and the U.N. Cultural agency" in a supposedly expert warning distributed through a plethora of media outlets by Associated Press.

The photo they show is captioned, "Marinid gold dinars with kufic inscriptions (13th-15th AD), part of the emergency red list" and describes these as.one of the cultural treasures from Libya that needs to be watched for:

 Unfortunately, the image accompanying this caption is a silver tetradracm of Nikis, a magistrate of Cyrene in the late 5th to early 4th century BC — not even remotely from medieval Libya. So, what is a customs inspector to do when they see one of these treasures? Treat it as "looted Libyan goods" and seize it? It would be nice if the experts would get it right on something as simple as a common coin attribution.

The English publisher John Howland correctly calls UNESCO and ICOM a Vaudeville act and adds:

Perhaps some Customs Officers are opening themselves to civil claims and actions if they base their seizures on seriously flawed information as shown by ICOM's hideous gaffe.

Indeed, let us hope that in the New Year collectors and dealers start taking a firmer stance and challenging the threats to their rights more frequently. It is a good job we have such luminaries as Mr Sayles and Mr Howland to shed some light into the darkness of official ignorance and lies.