Coins Do NOT Come from Archeological Sites

Respected numismatic dealer Dave Welsh has a lot of experience with officials who write the MOUs. He points out on the Ancient Artifacts forum the fallacy of including coins on those lists:

Import restrictions on coins entering the USA have absolutely no verifiable effect upon the looting you are describing. You've evidently uncritically accepted the archaeology lobby's mantra "collecting = looting." There is absolutely no verifiable evidence that this is true. Nor is there any evidence that is really even plausible. This assertion is neither proven, nor provable, from a scientific perspective. If it were true, then coins would be the least offensive or dangerous type of artifact because it isn't economically sensible to go prospecting for coins in the neighborhood of inhabited areas. Robert Kokotailio had many enlightening things to say about that in a recent message on this subject. When it comes to encouraging looting, ceramics collectors such as yourself and Kyri are at much higher risk of that than is a coin collector, because the objects you collect are typically found in inhabited areas, and also in tombs. Coin hoards, the source of the well preserved coins collectors end up acquiring, are almost never found in areas that are genuine archaeological sites. They were "buried treasure," deliberately located in out of the way places where no one would be likely to accidentally discover them. Coin discoveries in inhabited areas are nearly always "ground finds" that are in poor and usually uncollectible condition. Looters do find coins of this sort, but they aren't what the looters are really looking for. They pick them up anyway because they do have some value, even as scrap metal. If the 1983 CCPIA were being evenhandedly and fairly administered, the USA would not have accepted requests from foreign governments to include coins on the Restricted Lists of these MOUs. Coins were not included prior to 2006, for the reasons noted above. Their inclusion since then has been a matter of uncritical administrative acceptance of the archaeology lobby's recommendations, against the recommendations of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, whose membership includes representatives of all interested parties and which is well structured to sift all the available information and draw sensible conclusions.