Torc Found by Treasure Hunter to be Bought by Museum

Museums have been offered the chance to buy 3000-yr-old gold torc that was found by a metal detectorist in a field:

A 3000-year old torc found in a field in east Cambridgeshire is one of the largest and heaviest to be unearthed in the UK. The torc, dating from 1100 to 1300 BC, is being valued before local museums in Cambridgeshire are given the chance to raise funds to buy the rare object. A metal detectorist found the torc in a field, after seeking permission from the landowner, [...] Torcs were normally worn around the neck or arm, but this one, weighing 732g and with a diameter of 49in (1.25m) is too large to fit an average person's waist. Fowler said it may have been designed to be worn over thick winter clothing, as a sash, or by an animal awaiting sacrifice. [...] Once a value has been assigned to the object and a sale made, the proceeds will be divided between the finder and the landowner. [...] the “best practice” for those seeking treasure is to get “permission from the landowner and have liability insurance”. The torc is among a number of treasures uncovered by the public in the past year. More than 1.2 million finds have been recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, managed by the British Museum with local and national partners, since 1997.

Our American Heritage Initiative

We believe that our true American heritage has been ignored, rewritten and dishonored by liberal and progressive forces. It is our civic duty to revitalize the truth of our exceptional heritage to all American citizens and to restore and preserve our wonderful history and founding values and principles.

Why Import Restrictions Will not Work

Dave E. Welsh a respected Californian dealer explains his opposition to the draconian import restrictions favored by the archeologists and their state department friends:

Import restrictions contribute absolutely nothing to this criminal deterrence [to looting]. The risk involved is economic: Customs detention and possible confiscation of a shipment, which means that the recipient of the shipment loses the items imported without compensation. This risk can successfully be evaded by smuggling the items involved into the USA, or misrepresenting their shipment, to then be illicitly and unethically handled by a cooperating US resident, thereafter to be via misrepresentation of origin, or nondisclosure of origin, licitly auctioned or otherwise licitly conveyed to innocent recipients who cannot be prosecuted for the transaction.

The only practical effect of these restrictions is to gradually strangle international commerce, by effectively making importation of listed antiquities economically impractical for ethical collectors and dealers. The eventual outcome, if MOUs expand so far as to effectively ban importation of all antiquities, as the archaeology lobby and their Cultural Heritage Center colluders desire, will be that unethical operations to smuggle listed antiquities into the USA via methods described above will become profitable enough to supply the USA market without criminal risk to the eventual acquirers of these antiquities.

In other words, this attempt to restrict commerce is virtually guaranteed by the laws of economics -- which take precedence over any and all human legislation -- to lead to an uncontrollable wholesale "black market" of much the same sort as that which developed during Prohibition. The ultimate beneficiaries of this folly will be organized crime, and there will be absolutely no impact on looting of archaeological sites.

In a post on his blog, Dave Welsh explains further the practical impossibility of enforcing import restrictions (Porous Borders Fri Nov 25, 2016):

In this post I examine the practical realities of attempting to implement a theoretical doctrine relying upon US import restrictions to control looting of archaeological sites. From a theoretical perspective the migration of "illicit" artifacts to markets where they can be sold is analogous to a problem in hydrology: a medium in flow seeks its lowest level, i.e. the path of least resistance. I believe that every reader of this list has observed this principle in practice when the behavior of flowing water is considered. Taking that analogy somewhat further, let's consider the actual process of bringing an "illicit" artifact to market. There is an artificial, and economically unnatural, barrier to doing this - a law or regulation restricting the travel of the artifact in question across international borders.

This restriction is not guaranteed to be effective simply because it was legislated, or much more frequently, imposed by bureaucratic fiat. It must impose an actual, effective deterrence to cross-border transit, which prevents a flow of artifacts across borders.

The border between the USA and Canada is 3000 miles or more in extent. Every artifact whose importation into the USA is restricted may be licitly imported into Canada. A shipment of enormous value, a million dollars for example, can easily be concealed within the pockets of an individual carrier transporting ancient coins, or flown across the border in a drone. Only a very small part of this border is actually policed. 99.9 percent of it is empty land where anyone who desires to do so can simply walk across the border transporting anything which the individual concerned can carry.

If that consideration isn't enough to convince you, there are Indian reservations on both the US northern and southern borders, through which large amounts of illicit imports presently routinely flow without any effective deterrence : see for example Indian reservations on both U.S. borders become drug pipelines

There is no reason to believe that US control of its international borders can effectively impose any effective control upon at-will illicit importation of small portable antiquities, such as ancient coins.

As the nation looks to Mr Trump to make good his election promises and build a wall to separate us from those illegals, perhaps the flow of items transported across the borders up an Indian's butthole for example will decrease, but what about Mr Welsh's drones? Which dealers would be handling this stuff?

Above: Crossing the border

Will New President Repeal the MOU's?

Edgar L. Owen, a respected dealer asks: Can we get Trump to repeal the MOU's? Thu Nov 24, 2016

Trump has promised to greatly reduce unnecessary and oppressive regulations. It seems to me his administration would be a great time for an all out effort to reverse the oppressive MOUs and other international agreements that threaten to unfairly criminalize and destroy the legitimate collecting of ancient coins and antiquities. I sincerely hope and encourage the ACCG and Peter Trompa, and others with influence to renew their efforts for sanity in collecting during the Trump administration.... 

That seems like a good idea, for too long have unelected bureaucrats threatened our hobby with annihilation. it is time for us to annihilate them.

Hypocrisy of Repatriation

The authorities are hypocrites. If they wish to return antiquities from private collectors, let's first start with the museums in UK, France, and Germany who looted ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. First let them return all their items before they ask us private citizens to follow their personal example.

Nimrud Liberated

Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division liberated Nimrud town and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings.

Iraqi government forces say they have captured Nimrud, the site of an ancient Assyrian city overrun by Islamic State (IS) group militants two years ago. In March 2015, officials and historians condemned IS for the destruction of the archaeological site, which dates back to the 13th Century BC. The UN's cultural body described the act as a war crime. IS says shrines and statues are "false idols" that have to be smashed. Nimrud lies about 30km (20 miles) south-east of the major city of Mosul, which Iraqi government forces are attempting to take from IS.

Many Nimrud artefacts are now housed overseas - including these ivory pieces at the British Museum

Political Correctness Loses

Making America Great Again

An excellent comment from Dave Welsh, cultural property object expert and coin dealer with which I wholeheartedly agree (Political Correctness Loses, November 09, 2016): 

The 2016 US Presidential election is now history, and the big loser was political correctness. Millions of ordinary Americans who were so tired of "everything being politicized" that they would not discuss their true views with pollsters or even their families, friends and neighbors, spoke decisively at the polls against that trend which became so obnoxiously intrusive on their lives during the past eight years.

In a few months a new Administration will take office, dedicated to the goal of "making America great again." That Administration will need to address many very important issues, which affect the entire nation and large segments of its population.

 It is my hope that in applying its attention and energies to these large issues, this Administration will remember that there are also many smaller problems and injustices which in fairness and justice to their limited constituencies, should also be addressed. Taken together, these many smaller issues do add up to a big issue. It may be conceptualized as righting wrongs which have arisen from the failed and negative culture of political correctness. 

Here is a plea for the remembrance of a wrong that has been inflicted upon American collectors of antiquities, specifically including my specialty of ancient coins, by a small coterie of dedicated ideologues in the US State Department bureaucracy. I refer to the exploitation and perversion of the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act by the State Department's Cultural Heritage Center and its predecessor agencies and bureaus, under the direction of archaeologist Maria Kouroupas, who over a period of thirty years of systematic and wily bureaucratic maneuvering twisted what was originally a carefully thought out, well balanced system for ensuring fair and equitable implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property into a tool for protecting and advancing the interests of archaeology, at the expense of those of US collectors.

The authority of the Cultural Heritage Center to administer this system derives from Executive Order number 12555, dated March 10, 1986, delegating specific functions conferred upon the President by the 1983 CCPIA to the Director of the United States Information Agency, a predecessor agency to the Cultural Heritage Center. This Order was signed by President Reagan.

 By promulgating a new Executive Order revoking that delegation, and establishing a new agency to which these specific functions are delegated, the new Administration could with one stroke of the pen, remove the Cultural Heritage Center and its director from all future involvement in and influence upon the 1983 CCPIA, which they have so deviously and unethically maladministered.

I urge that this new agency be specifically chartered to, and tasked with, return of the administration of the 1983 CCPIA to its original legislative intent, of fairly and equitably balancing the interests of all concerned parties in considering requests by foreign governments for the imposition or extension of import restrictions upon designated artifacts. Such an administrative process could, in this observer's view, best be directed by a respected and experienced administrative law judge with a background in international commerce.

This new agency should, after whatever transition period is appropriate to set it up and transfer control of the delegated functions from the Cultural Heritage Center, become part of the Department of Commerce. No one in the staff of the Cultural Heritage Center should be transferred or in any way participate in the operations of the new agency, as it is glaringly apparent that their primary loyalty is not to the interests of the American people, but to the interests of archaeology.

Making America Great Again: Un-American Activities

With a long-awaited new Government coming in soon, it is time to look at those who have subverted the system and weakening it from within: Gregory Kreig, "Newt Gingrich wants new House Un-American Activities Committee", CNN June 14, 2016)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is calling for the creation of a new House Committee on Un-American Activities [...] Gingrich, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, has been touted as a potential running mate for the presumptive Republican nominee. His comments on Monday echoed Trump's, as the billionaire businessman suggested "Muslim communities" should be held to greater account for the actions of their neighbors. "They know what is going on," Trump said during a speech Monday in New Hampshire. "They know that (the Orlando killer) was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what, they didn't turn them in, and we had death and destruction." [...] "We're going to take much tougher positions."

Let us hope that this could be a venue within which can be examine the activities against the interests of American citizens undertaken by the out-of-control

State Department's Cultural Heritage Center and its predecessor agencies and bureaus, under the direction of archaeologist Maria Kouroupas, who over a period of thirty years of systematic and wily bureaucratic maneuvering twisted what was originally a carefully thought out, well balanced system for ensuring fair and equitable implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention into a tool for protecting and advancing the interests of archaeology, at the expense of those of US collectors.

Our Elections Continue Ancient Tradition

Our elections continue ancient traditions rooted in Classical civilization.

Argument For America

Donald Trump's Argument For America

Archeologist Stole from Tomb of Turtankhamen

Archeologists, with their holier than thou attitudes towards honest collectors that only want to preserve and display artifacts, should acknowledge the faults in their own profession:

Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamen in 1922, cheated the Egyptian authorities in an attempt to get a share of the fabulous treasure, German Egyptologists claim. Carter, whose sensational discovery in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor is widely regarded as the greatest archaeological find of all time, broke laws by smuggling objects from the tomb out of the country and entering and disturbing the burial chamber without the presence of Egyptian officials, experts in Germany are saying. They say Carter's claim that the 3,200-year-old grave had already been robbed in ancient times was probably a lie designed to circumvent a law that stated that any treasure found intact had to remain in Egypt, but that the contents of a disturbed tomb could be divided up between Egypt and the finders. Doubts about Carter's methods are not new but the debate keeps resurfacing with the discovery of Tutankhamen artefacts in museum collections around the world. This, Egyptologists claim, suggests that they were secretly brought out of Egypt by Carter or members of his team.

David Crossland, "Howard Carter stole from tomb of Tutankhamen" The National January 21, 2010