Wikileaks Impact On Numismatics

I read several years ago that it was illegal in Serbia for private individuals to remove Roman artifacts - mostly coins, of course - from the ground. And yet most of the treasure troves of Roman coins are found in the Balkans - the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, in addition to Turkey and Germany. Does that mean that I have illegally-obtained Roman and Byzantine coins in my possession? Is anyone else living in Europe, Africa, and the Mideast under these same strictures?

Dug up coins are a very different matter than coins found at sea, if the coins were found on government property than they can actually have a very strong case depending on the country (the UK for example has very strict laws regarding treasure hoards found).

Spain claims that at the time, every single ship sailing from Spanish ports was sailing under the command and authority of the Spanish navy, and therefore every single Spanish ship was technically a "warship". Even if it's primary role was as a treasure barge.

Of course, if Spain's primary concern was the desecration of it's war graves, it should publicly announce that if it wins the case it will dump all the coins back in the sea again.

Several people have expressed the sentiment that the Spanish government is out for money - they're not. Spain is going to lose money on this deal, whatever the outcome. They have no intention of selling off the Black Swan coins themselves nor or ever allowing any of them to ever be sold to collectors. If they win custody of the coins and artefacts, Spain will have to pay to build a museum (in Spain) to house them in. The only "gain" Spain would make from them is as an asset; some future Spanish government that cared more about balancing budgets than cultural heritage might consider selling them off, but the current one does not and will not.


Serbia's got nothing on the restrictive laws in place in Turkey, Israel, Egypt and most other countries where ancient civilizations once thrived. Of course, such laws are meaningless if the government there lacks the money and manpower to do anything about enforcing them; such is the situation in many former Eastern Bloc countries.

Top of the list of countries that not only have draconian laws but have the will to enforce them is Greece, where the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs (which guards Greece's cultural heritage) is one of the largest and most powerful government bureaucracies. By Greek law, any object older than 1820, whether still buried in the ground, underwater, or sitting in a collection somewhere, belongs to the State. Non-citizens may not possess them. Greek citizens who are collectors of pre-1820 coins are custodians, not owners; they are allowed to buy and sell the rights to be their custodians (only to other Greek citizens) but they can't actually sell, export, hide or damage the coins themselves. They have to register their collections and be able to present them on demand to any government archaeologist or historian that wishes to examine them. Owning a metal detector is illegal. They've prosecuted coin dealers and museums in Britain and the US for handling stolen objects. They'll even join the forum in an attempt to track down coin smugglers.


The balance of probability is that most if not all of the people who dug up and sold the ancient and mediaeval coins we now own, were breaking local laws when they did so. In that sense, the answer to your question is, "most probably, yes". But if your coins have no provenance - and in all likelihood the only "provenance" you will have is, "I bought it from a dealer" - then you can never be sure one way or the other.

They are no doubt trying, but they are hamstrung by their own policies. They can't afford to look, and certainly couldn't afford to actually find stuff. Odyssey is a "for profit" salvage crew; money from the sale of the stuff they find is supposed to pay for their running costs; any archaeology done is a by-product of their search for treasure, and not their main goal. Spain would never consider running an archaeological search for its own wrecks on that basis and it is this more than anything else that Spain is objecting to. A "Spanish version of Odyssey" would be a huge drain on the Cultural Heritage Institute budget, and it would take far longer to excavate each wreck, since the archaeologists would be in charge; to work as fast as Odyssey does, they'd need a dozen Odyssey-sized teams.

The honest , logical , correct thing to do would be what always gets done with ship wrecked coins.

Scrub each free of crust with a wire brush ,clean coin very well ,throw it in a polisher then grade each one as ms-70. Take the coins and insert them into a velvet boxes with a 3 page article about how rare they are along with drawings of the ship .Then list each one on the HSN until each one is sold.

Its also a option to take a few silver ones plate them in gold put them in a pendant necklace and sell those on the BET channel at 2-6am .

If a government wants to make claim to some particular set of lost antiquities at sea, they better be looking for it themselves. If not, then it is obviously not important enough or worth the risk, RISK, of investing their own money, time, and effort to do so. If they want to hire some entity to look for the treasures, or have some sort of mechanism to purchase a portion of the antiquities at a fair market value (something likely practically impossible to determine), then that could be reasonable, but the cost to find and recover treasure is so enormous that just after the fact claims to take it away are ludicrous. The treasure would not be searched for or found in the first place if the searchers have no stake in finding it.

Strict yes, but also some of the fairest. Finds have to be reported,but if they ar not declared "treasure" the finder gets to keep them and split with the landowner. If they are declared "treasure" then the finder and landowners are paid the fair market value of the items. The only way the finder loses under their laws is if he doesn't declare the find and is found out. I believe in that case the find is confiscated and the finder in fined as well. This makes it to the finders advantage to report finds, since he can't lose, and allows finds and the area to be properly examined by archeologists. A "win/win" situation.

I do NOT know enough about maritime laws pertaining to sunken ships in international waters.
I do feel the Odyssey, finding this ship, which I am not even sure it has definitively been named, should be entitled to some fee, I just am not sure the fee is being, or going to be decided by an open minded entity and this can NOT be good for further expeditions, by any treasure seeking companies, all said, I too hope the founders receive a better than good portion of the findings, after all it was found in international waters.PS, Do you think there are insurance companies also in the wings waiting to stake their claims?

Remember how simple things were as kids, "finders keepers, losers weepers".