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Public Comments on Italian MOU Renewal
What YOU Can Do
Sample Letter


Dear pishpash

Expansion of Italian MOU

The U.S. State Department and U.S. Customs have already drastically limited our ability to bring Greek, Punic, Etruscan, and early Republican coins struck in Italy into our country legally. Now, unless collectors engage, there is a real danger the State Department and U.S. Customs will use an upcoming renewal of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Italy to extend current restrictions to Roman Imperial coins. That would make them quite difficult to import legally as well.


What YOU Can Do

Please help protect your continued ability to purchase Roman Imperial coins from abroad by telling the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) what you think about the issue. To submit a comment, visit the Federal eRulemaking Portal and follow the prompts. Please note comments may be posted only UNTIL MARCH 20, 2015 at 11:59 PM.

What should you say? Indicate how restrictions will negatively impact your business, hobby, and/or the cultural understanding and people-to-people contacts collecting provides. Add that it's typically impossible to assume a particular coin (especially Roman ones) was "first discovered within" and "subject to the export control" of Italy. You might also add that Italian historical coins are very common and widely and legally available for sale elsewhere, and point out the absurdity of restricting coins freely available for sale in Italy itself. Your own words are best, but feel free to use the below as a model.

Over the past several years, numerous restrictions have been forced through by the State Department. For each of these, we have asked our fellow collectors to make their voice heard in defense of our hobby. As of today, just over fifty responses have been received - over four hundred were submitted for the last MOU. Collectors have always strived to preserve antiquities from the depridations of war and shifting political climates. In light of the atrocities being commited by ISIS in the Middle East, it is now even more important for us to defend our right to collect.

For more, see the Cultural Property Observer blog.



Sample Letter

Dear CPAC:

Enough is enough. This MOU should be allowed to lapse. Its negative impacts on collecting and the appreciation of Italian culture and people-to-people contacts collecting brings now far outweigh any benefits. At a minimum, please free all ancient coins from restriction. Such coins are openly and legally available for sale worldwide, including within Italy itself. It makes absolutely no sense to continue to restrict American access to what Italians themselves have enjoyed since the Renaissance. Finally, please do not recommend new restrictions on Roman Imperial coins. As the products of a great empire, these coins circulated throughout Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. They "belong" not to Italy, but to us all.

Sincerely,
xxx




All the best,

The Staff at CNG, Inc.