Posted 05/12/2025 08:30 am
Quote:
So if someone goes on holiday to somewhere vaguely exotic, sees an old or unusual coin and wants to buy it for their collection, what's the best thing to do?
So if someone goes on holiday to somewhere vaguely exotic, sees an old or unusual coin and wants to buy it for their collection, what's the best thing to do?
It is essential for a collector to research the local laws before you go. Many countries which have hosted ancient civilizations within their borders have had foreigners coming to them and plundering their relics for centuries, so they quite reasonably implement laws to stop and if possible even reverse this. As such, coin collectors are seen as part of the problem of fuelling black market smuggling and looting. Yes, we're the bad guys.
Each country does have widely varying definitions on what is an antiquity. Some countries have a fixed date (such as "1826" for Greece), for other countries, it's simply the age of the object in question so that a coin that was legal a decade ago might have now crossed the age threshold into illegality.
Also greatly varying is who is allowed to own, buy and sell such antiquities. Some countries are quite free and open about it, others require reams of paperwork, others outright ban it. Greece is notorious for being the most strict in this matter: anything older than 1826 is an antiquity and therefore belongs to the State and may not be bought, sold or exported, no exceptions. Greek citizens may purchase the right to be the custodian of an antiquity and as such may have an "ancient coin collection", but cannot legally own the antiquities themselves and must abide by strict conditions of custodianship such as registering their collection with the government and having the collection available for inspection by government agents on demand. If you're in Greece and happen to find an ancient coin just by digging a hole in the ground at random (something that happens extremely frequently in Greece) you are supposed to hand over your find to the government, with no compensation or reward, other than the warm fuzzy feeling of being a good honorable citizen and not one of those dirty rotten coin collectors.
Finally, one must also mention copies/fakes/replicas of ancient coins. In most countries where buying and selling genuine ancient coins is illegal, buying and selling fake/replica ancient coins is perfectly legal. So if you go to some antiquity-themed tourist trap like Ephesus (which is the Disneyland of archaeological sites, they get 3 cruise ships a day through there at peak season) and there are rows of stalls of street-hawkers at the gates, selling souvenirs including "ancient coins". Every single one of those coins will be fake, because selling ancient coins to tourists is illegal in Turkey. Even buying a fake ancient coin is risky in these circumstances, because you're gambling that the border security guards inspecting your bags when you leave the country can tell the difference between fake ancient coins and real ones. You don't want to be spending three months in a Turkish prison while the authorities try to determine whether the "ancient coins" found in your baggage are genuine or not.
TLDR: the "best thing to do" if you aren't very familiar with local antiquities laws, is to leave that coin there where you found it, continue having your nice holiday, then go back home, and buy a coin just like the one you saw from a local coin dealer. That's what I did when I visited Turkey.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
