Nurse + Coins + Macedonia = Jail?

I find it the same way Yn.... It's kind of weird... If we dont share art, why make it?

They were ancient and/or mediaeval coins. Macedonia, like most other countries in the Mediterranean region, has cultural protection laws in place, preventing the willy-nilly export of antiquities.

I just hope that the coins in question are actually genuine, since that part of the world is the main location of replica/counterfeit ancient coin manufacture. I'd hate to serve jail time just because some judge didn't know a fake coin when he saw one.

For an anti-coin-collector perspective on the story, check out the Paul Barfield blog.

Well, ancient coins need to be treated differently than modern coins, because they are much more important as historical artifacts than as collectibles. From what I've gathered, ancient coins on the market are generally sold raw, without any reference to where they were found. This is troubling to me, because they are historical artifacts! They are part of the archaeological record! Selling them raw and unattributed to a site is irresponsible, because it erases that knowledge. In addition, it means you have to worry about counterfeiting because you don't know where it came from! There can be a responsible way to sell ancient coins, which would entail somehow associating a permanent record to the artifact encoding its provenance. Realistically, ensuring this means encapsulation, which is never done.

There is much more to be said about this, but it's 2:23 AM where I am, so I'll leave it there for now.

Cursive, I can see your point, but what do you do about the 2,000 years worth of coins that have already been dug up, and disbursed that have lost their archaeological connection? I'm all for protecting recent finds and keeping a provenance connection to the coins, but the best way to do this is to reward the reporting of finds and allow the finders to profit from their discovery. As with England's treasure trove laws, not to simply confiscate as many countries do. That only encourages the plundering of sites and the anonymous smuggling of artifacts or even the melting down of items of precious metal. After all if you are going to confiscate the gold coins I found and maybe put me in jail, my best chance to get away with them is to melt them down into an anonymous gold bar.

And yes maybe ancient coins need to be treated differently than moderns but where does the break point come? China has been truly to get their coins declared as cultural heritage up through 1911. During the first gulf war when it was believed that a museum had been looted they were proposing a ban on any coins that could have even come THROUGH Iraq or Kuwait up to 1990. Later after the supposed looting of a museum in Afghanistan a similar ruling was proposed. (In both cases it was eventually determined that the museums had NOT been looted, the curators had simply moved the collections from the museums to more secure locations.)