We support government efforts to recover coins illegally taken from scheduled archaeological sites or stolen from private or public collections when clear proof of such is evident. We oppose government efforts to place the burden of proof on collectors, dealers and museums to show that a particular coin did not come from a country with restrictive cultural property laws. This is an impossible burden to meet because there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of historical coins in the trade or in public and private collections with no known “provenance.” Ancient coins are so common that even archaeologists often fail to properly record the circumstances of their discovery. It is unfair to assume that collectors, dealers and museums can show the provenance of their coins when coins have been widely traded since the Renaissance without any requirement to show their chain of ownership.
