Eid Mar Coin Seller Arrested

Not knowing the details, but I speculate if the US is giving the coin back to Greece, there must be a claim by Greece that the coin was exported illegally.

@sel_69l, indeed. But my supposition is that the techniques and abilities already exist to recreate a fake EID MAR that would fool even the finest experts in the world, if someone so desired; and admittedly $4m+ is a powerful motivation for that desire.

That being said, if this coin WERE to be a forgery, would the Greeks really want it back? I would imagine yes -- but they'd probably keep that bit quiet, to avoid the associated embarrassment.

I tend to agree with @livingwater -- governments are definitely pursuing repatriation much more fervently when the item in question is worth a large sum.

Italy, for instance, seized 11m euros' worth of antiquities from a SINGLE COLLECTOR in 2021, citing unauthorized export; other countries are following their lead, including Greece; in reality it is little more than government-sponsored theft for financial reasons which aims to hide the underlying profit motive underneath a veil of false and indignant righteousness, and has little to do with the preservation of culturally significant antiquities.

This is not without a bit of irony when you consider that only 5 years prior, the Italian crime syndicates (whose existence the Italian government de facto regards as an inevitability, despite decades of government lip-service to ending corruption and organized crime interference in matters of state) were themselves doing a very profitable trade with ISIS/ISIL - arms for artifacts; in countries like Syria and Libya, where insurgent-backed regimes have financed military operations by selling looted antiquities to not only organized crime syndicates but also to governments who are willing to not look too closely.

One needs only to look at the Austrian government's prolonged and increasingly desperate attempts to keep Klimt's 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' from being returned to its rightful owner to see a great example of financial motives crushing ethical considerations, which made them look all the worse for it when they lost the case anyway and had to return the portraits to their lawful heir.

How is it know that the coin came from Greece, anyway? If there is no provenance, could it not have come from anywhere in the region?

According to what appear to be the original charging documents, the Eid Mar was given to Beale by Vecchi in 2014 "with no provenance" and Beale subsequently shopped the coin around (via photo) at the 2015 NYINC as coming "from an old Swiss collection". The same document asserts that according to an informant, the coin actually "originated in Greece". I assume that based on information from defendants and informants, the Manhattan DA and HSI were satisfied that the coin was stolen property belonging to the people of Greece and thus returned. Police agencies are quite adept these days at working backward to the source in cases of trafficking and looting. Copies of the charging documents have been posted in other forums but links to those forums are banned here, it seems.

louisvillekyshop :
Also a well reasoned opinion that you have presented.

It is quite disturbing that any artifact could be "repatriated" based on a mere allegation, not even entered into evidence in a trial with a named source, much less found as fact by a trial court, that it was found in such-and-such country.

According to the NY Times article printed back in March, the investigators had evidence the coin had been dug up "more than a decade ago in an area of current-day Greece where Brutus and his civil war ally, Gaius Cassius Longinus, were encamped with their army". I don't think the nature of the evidence is discussed anywhere.

Not that this matters, as far as US Customs is concerned. "Where a coin was originally minted" matters far more than "where it was dug up", as far as the MOUs go that US Customs has signed with Greece, Italy, Cyprus, etc. A coin only has to have been made in Greece, or to be proven archaeologically to have circulated primarily in Greece, and back to Greece it goes. Here's the text of the USA-Greece MOU; scroll down to Section B7. If you have a coin that was dug up outside of its "native" territory, that's OK, but it's "guilty until proven innocent", in terms of provenance: you, the importer, need to prove that the coin was not found in Greece, or it is liable to repatriation. A receipt from a coin dealer proving that you bought it in Melbourne or Buenos Aires or Berlin is not going to cut it (unless the receipt dates from prior to 1970, when the UNESCO treaty was enacted).

So if you're a British citizen and go legally metal detecting in England and find an Athenian tetradrachm, and decide to bring your find to America with you on holiday to show it off to your American friends, and you're honest about the coin on the US Customs declaration, then that coin is liable to be repatriated to Greece - despite the fact that you personally know that it hasn't been anywhere near Athens for the past 2300+ years.

In terms of the EID MAR coin, there is no question that it was originally minted in Greece; this has been proven archaeologically. So to legally import it into America, the importer must prove, to the satisfaction of any US Customs agent that cared enough to ask, that the coin definitely was not excavated from Greek territory. Which is why Mr Beale lied and said it was from "Turkey". Exporting such a coin from Turkey without a permit would also be illegal under Turkish law, but US Customs doesn't care about this because Greek-origin coins aren't on the Turkish MOU.

I understand there was a crime of forgery of papers.
But did anyone prove the coin was found recently and exported contrary to the laws of the place?

Most everything in museums was looted. Now there is too much posturing about looting. And no one mentions the old looting. This thing called provenance just means someone wealthy paid looters in the past for the stuff. So why is the stuff in collections untouchable and the stuff in the ground grabbed by states? If the stuff Lord Elgin took is not being returned, why is this?.A single roman coin is less culturally relevant to Greece than that stuff looted longer ago and held in museums and private collections. Too much posturing.