Kaleun96

Aaron and Mike of HJB discuss the events in their latest podcast episode:

I didn't exactly want to bring this up again but Paul Barford is more dishonest than I originally thought and has called me out on his blog and misrepresented my comments to him while also trying to hide from his laziness by covering up his plagiarism of my post. So I want to briefly document what he's trying to cover up by editing and censoring his blog and my comments on his blog to change the context in which I called out his blatant plagiarism. I want to post this here as he is addressing one of my comments from this thread but I don't aim to derail this thread with this topic, just saving it so people understand just how lazy and shifty of an "academic" Paul really is. I posted a comment on his post on March 8th drawing his attention to the plagiarism of my comment (see above quoted post). Today he finally approved the comment and we had the following exchange: Paul: Me: Paul then edited the blog post to remove the plagiarised content and invited readers of his blog to go find the plagiarism - which of course would be missing now that he edited it out. He then edited his comment above to the following: Paul: Paul leaves another comment Paul: I left a comment, which hasn't been saved in my emails as it was never approved, basically saying people have a right to anonymity online and this hobby is no different from thousands of other hobbies online where people retain such anonymity. I also asked how he would like to be addressed if he'd prefer I not use the name he writes under. I suggested this is a good opportunity for a username if he prefers people who do not know him not call him by his Christian name. I also pointed out the irony of him saying "I write things that I am willing to stand by and put my real name under" considering my problem is that he has been putting his name under things that he hasn't written himself (i.e. my post). At this point, Paul (or perhaps he'd prefer to be called xXPaulieB_420Xx), deleted the entire comment chain except for my first comment pointing out the plagiarism and asking for credit. He then changed the blog post to focus on one of my other comments in this thread and proceeds to make arguments against what I wrote. Now my comment below the post is entirely out of context and is pointing out plagiarism that he has since removed from his blog post. He then posted a new comment, playing dumb as if this was his first response to my comment: Paul: Paul thought he was being sneaky by changing the blog post title but unfortunately he forgot to change the URL, which is still under the 2023/03/beware-ides-of-march.html URL slug. He also forgot to update the post date, as it shows the post was supposedly made on March 15th yet my comment was left on March 8th. Woops, guess you forgot to fix that one Paul. The original "Beware the Ides of March" post got moved to an entirely new post, perhaps the 7th iteration judging by the URL suffix: 2023/03/beware-ides-of-march_7.html. Undoing plagiarism is hard I guess, but he got there eventually. This is how that blog post now looks, posted under the new URL, which has been edited to better paraphrase my original comment and avoid plagiarism. And for record keeping purposes, here's a link to the archive of the original blog post that contained the plagiarism. Paul, I'm afraid you can't escape your lack of integrity or writing ability by changing a few URLs and censoring or misrepresenting my comments.

Some discussion of this news can also be found in this thread starting from here: As for why Greece, which is a question that might come up for those not following the other thread, it appears that there may have been a photo of the eid mar taken in situ, proving it was found in Greece. Just speculation at the moment but there is also other information from a Greek website that links two other coins, sold by Roma and Nomos, to allegedly illegal Greek excavations.

On the whole, I don't think we've been overpaying for coins even if the alleged practices of bidding-up of coins and "washing" them through auction houses is true and widespread. I say that because the number of coins coming to auction from illegal finds is probably so substantial, it's keeping down the prices more than the dodgy bidding practices might be increasing them. The hoard of Owl tets is probably the best example of this. While prices haven't bottomed out as much as you might expect for a type with hundreds being sold every week, they're still much cheaper now than they were a decade or so ago. If auction houses only sold coins that were 100% legitimate according to all applicable laws (hypothetically let's pretend this is possible for them to know), I imagine the number of coins coming up for auction each week would be drastically reduced and the current levels of demand for them would send prices even higher than they are currently. So in that sense I think we probably benefit from lower prices even if these looters/middle-men are bidding up their own coins. Just guessing about this all of course, but that's my impression.

That's actually mentioned in the Brent Easter affidavit but easy to miss! On page 3 it mentions it was imported originally with "Turkey", presumably for the NGC slabbing, and then later imported with "Italy" after it was sold. I would say the new articles contain a fair amount of contextual (though unsubstantiated) information about Roma, especially the 2016 Corinth stater that was mentioned. It gets to closer to the heart of the looter --> auction house relationship than the affidavit does but hard to do much with the info without the case documents it's supposedly based on.

Thanks, no problem at all!

It's been mentioned in this thread recently that ZP is a dealer under the name "Zeno Pop", which brings up some relevant results on google under the search "Zeno Pop Numismatics".

Not entirely sure what these fields mean but in the context of what you're saying I'm assuming: bs_hammer = hammer price buyer_user_id = user who won the lot highest_bidded_amount = the max bid, or max prebid? highest_bidded_user_id = user who placed the highest bid, which I assume is normally the same as buyer_user_id? So are you saying that user_1 (id: xx39) won the lot for 900 GBP even though user_2 (id: xx94) supposedly had placed a max bid of 1800 GBP? That does seem very odd if so. I wonder how that could happen? Normally you might suspect some issue with the syncing of bids across multiple platforms but if you're saying this data was available somewhere during the live auction on Roma's site, it would indicate Roma had all the necessary bid data, right? edit: does seem the hammer was 900 GBP, i.e. what the bs_hammer field has

Couldn't agree more. There is zero transparency when auction houses like Naumann frequently bid on their own lots to win them back and prevent them going for too low of a price. I think we'd all be pretty suspicious if we had placed a max bid of, say, $2200 and were able to see that the only bidder bidding us up from $1500 to $2200 was the auction house themselves. Perhaps their "hidden reserve" was $2000 so they'd stop bidding at that point and you'd end up winning. Since the "hidden reserve" isn't disclosed, it would look exactly like shill bidding.

Some new information can be found in these two Greek articles. I'll summarise some bits from a translation I'm reading but otherwise you'll need to use Google Translate (unless you know Greek) to read the whole article: https://www.kathimerini.gr/society/562335169/archaiokapilia-to-thriler-me-to-chryso-nomisma-toy-vroytoy/ https://www.kathimerini.gr/society/562294195/oi-archaiokapiloi-poy-den-vrethikan-sto-edolio/ Roma was potentially a subject of a 2016 Greek investigation into an antiquities looting ring in Patras, where 47 defendants were referred for prosecution two years later but none from international auction houses "The relevant documents analyze the route of ancient objects (mainly coins) from their illegal excavation to their sale, the suspicious role of foreign auction houses in laundering antiquities, as well as techniques for manipulating electronic auctions with virtual 'hits'." [my note: perhaps 'hits' here is a bad translation of 'bids'?] A Corinth stater sold by Roma in 2016 was part of this investigation and supposedly a phone call was recorded of one of the defendants discussing this coin specifically. The Corinth stater appears to be this one. The 1920s provenance is argued to be false. An additional 27 coins likely minted in Greece were sold by Roma between September-October of 2016 with the same "G.J.P. Collection" provenance that the Corinth stater had. No other coins have been sold by Roma with this provenance since then. The trial has been postponed for some time, set to resume again in June of this year As part of the investigation, 2,024 coins have been confiscated, either including or in addition to 600 that had been exported to Munich and repatriated. A coin from Delphi sold by Nomos in May 2016 for 15,000 CHF was allegedly looted from Karpenisi just 3 months earlier. A recorded conversation of one of the defendants claimed that about half of the auction house's 20% fee is used for obtaining false CoAs. The investigation also alleges that auction houses encourage their Greek contacts to bid on their own coins to drive up the prices If the shill bidder wins, the auction house "awards" them the lot anyway, at no cost, and the shill bidder then can simply re-offer the coin later at another auction house with a more legitimate-looking "collection history" Such a practice would completely invalidate the purpose of the requirement some auction houses have of never auctioning off coins that don't have a previous auction or collection history [e.g. Nomos was quoted as saying this in the BBC documentary on the dekadrachms]. As many as 8 persons that are either owners, managers, or contacts of international auction houses have been named in the investigation but no charges will be brought against them due to insufficient evidence.

Curious about that too, I wonder if it hints at some plea deal having been worked out. Though I would've thought that even if Beale had admitted it was stolen, the coins would remain in evidence until the case is completed. In the case of the Naxos tetradrachm, I'm sure CBP has the authority to temporarily confiscate whatever they like for whatever reason at the border but surely there is an appeals process one could go through to request that a confiscate item should be allowed to be imported, which isn't exactly possible once it has been repatriated overseas.

Bit of a generalisation, no? You mentioned afterwards that you only buy specific types of coins and can't comment on the prices of others so perhaps best not to conclude the accusations against Beale made no difference overall. It's hard for any of us to say whether it made a dent or not without analysing the entire sale and comparing it to previous ones. Personally I saw some cheap hammers, and in the e-sale from last week I thought I got an excellent price on the coin I won. I also think many who may change their bidding based on the accusations wouldn't be doing it for moral reasons. At least based on what has been discussed in this thread, I think the main concerns are (a) increased risk of your wins being seized if you live in the US, and (b) increased risk of Roma being in a financially difficult position where either your coins or your money may get stuck in limbo for some time if the company were to dissolve or change ownership.

This news might ruffle some feathers, the Eid Mar has been repatriated to Greece: https://www.manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-returns-29-antiquities-to-greece/

Well, looks like it has hit the mainstream media now: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11886091/British-auction-house-boss-arrested-NYC-fraudulent-sale-worlds-expensive-coin.html

Not much new info here but CoinsWeekly has published an article on the topic: https://coinsweekly.com/new-york-prosecutor-to-press-charges-against-richard-beale-roma-numismatics/ The one new bit of info to me was the suspension of Vecchi's IAPN membership pending the outcome of the case, the details of which can be found here: https://iapn-coins.org/iapn-latest-news-2/

Looks like they republished the story they had on RobbReport. Amazingly, they fluffed the headline completely by saying the Eid Mar is a fake, when that is not part of what either Beale or HSI/DA are saying (as far as we know).

I assume you're posting this as a supposed response to people who think that coins simply lacking provenance deserved to be seized and repatriated, but you are mistaken in your premise. I don't believe anyone here is saying that is what should happen, rather we are questioning whether that is what HSI is doing in regards to the announced seizures. We are attempting to understand whether these seizures and the grand larceny/CPSP charges were legally predicated merely on the lack of provenance. We do not know if this is really the case and several people have mentioned this a few times, particularly our resident law expert Donna. Donna, and others, have cautioned against assuming the affidavit and warrant documents contains all the evidence that the State has against the defendants. Again, we do not know whether they have actual proof the coins were stolen or not. Instead, you and a few others are basing your comments on an assumption that this is the case - that the coins were seized merely because they lacked provenance. From this you suggest that the government is over-reaching in their authority and restricting the "rights" of US people to collect ancient coins. That can only be speculation as no one here knows what evidence HSI and the DA have that the coins were stolen. So posting the ANS cultural property statement is meaningless. Regardless of the evidence they may or may not have, I don't think anyone here would support coins being seized and declared stolen only because they lack provenance. Most of us here would support that if there is evidence of theft, however.

I've wondered about this too. There's only so much due diligence you can do as a buyer when the provenance is simply "form a European collection formed prior to 2005" or similar. Does that mean we should not buy a coin when the provenance is such? Or does it mean we need to use our further judgement as to whether we think it's likely the coin came from an old collection or was recently put on the market? Interestingly, if it meant we shouldn't be buying those coins, perhaps it would force auction houses to be more specific in their provenances, or more robust in their guarantees of sufficient provenance for most countries' import laws. Though I don't see this happening unless there was massive heavy-handed enforcement of consistent standards across multiple countries, which would ultimately be terrible for collectors. edit: any fans or otherwise of Paul's blog should read this post detailing his dishonesty. He's not a trustworthy guy and has little in the way of journalistic standards so keep that in mind when reading what dribble he puts online.

Interesting that it would have a different provenance on acsearch and coinarchives/numisbids but not on Roma's website, surely that's the first place that they would change it? I wonder if originally the lot only had "from an English collection" and acsearch + coinarchives/numisbids scraped the data at that time, then later on Roma updated it on their site to the correct provenance.

The search warrants for the Eid Mar, Naxos tetradrachm, and a previously undisclosed third coin are now out. Guess that confirms ArtNews' earlier claim that the Eid Mar had been seized. Warrant_1.pdf Warrant_2.pdf Here are the screenshots of the main bits, the PDFs have a photo of the Eid Mar and a coversheet or similar.

It wouldn't surprise me if it's more of Italo Vecchi's collection under a different name, though perhaps not the Bursio section of the sale. Comparing it to Vecchi's previous auction at Roma, E-Live 5, I do see some similarities, like the re-selling of ex. Roma lots from a few years ago that you mentioned. I believe the previous sale was mostly Greek and then this latest one is mostly Roman, could be that they planned to auction off his collection in two parts. Would be interesting if that's the case but I'm not sure if there's any way to know for sure. If it is true, I'd also wonder why they felt the need to change the collection name.

1) Good question, I haven't come across someone trying to do this before and the only thing that pops into my mind is decreasing magnification. So for a prime lens like your 60mm, that would mean focussing on the coin from further away with the trade-off being that the coin now takes up less of the image. If you've only just bought the lens, you might be able to return it for a 90mm to 105mm macro. Basically the only thing within your control for increasing working distance is increasing the minimum focus distance as you can't reduce the length of the lens nor the flange focal distance. So basically you'd need to change the focal length of the lens and I'm not sure if there's an easy way of doing that without reducing the magnification, increasing the magnification, or altering the optical performance. 2) I think Roma replaces the background for these photos as the coins always seem to be centered perfectly in the same spot and the drop shadows are very similar. They do a very good job of it. In general, a grey background like the one they use will make life difficult for removing later if shooting silver coins, or even some bronze and billon, on the background directly. You want the most contrast between coin and background so the first thing you want to do is raise the coin off of the background otherwise it will cast harsh shadows around the coin and not result in a clear separation between the coin and background. A pure white background is generally best for this, though you have to be careful it doesn't reflect too much light on the edge of the coin or it will "bleed" into the coin's edge and make separation difficult. I did some experiments with this here, though I forgot to post my final prototype (but you can find it here), which I have been using now for a few months with good results. In the end I just had a big LED COB separated from the coin by a sufficient distance, a diffuser, and some aperture control to help limit the light from bleeding into the coin's edge. You want the light to emit perpendicularly from the COB, rather than spread out and bounce off every surface. A bit complicated for most so I'm not suggesting you try to replicate it, rather just keep the same principles in mind. Shooting with lots of natural light will probably help expose both the coin and background quite well while also reducing shadows. Though I should also add I was going for near pixel-perfect results with my background removal. For most, and likely including Roma, such results are overkill and you can get by with more imperfection in the coin-background separation. So just try to remember these few principles and you'll probably be OK: Contrast between coin and background. The more contrast the better. Not every background colour will work for every coin but white is generally the most universal in my experience. The key to high contrast with a white background is making sure it's exposed correctly, often if you just expose for the coin the background will be under-exposed and thus darker/more grey. Control reflections. You don't want any light illuminating the edges too strongly. Often this happens when light bounces off the white background, then bounces off something else nearby, and the hits the coin edge, producing bright spots on the edge. Separate the coin from the background. Raise it off of the background to help create separation between the in-focus coin and out-of-focus background. This also helps reducing the shadows from the coin blending the separation between the edge of the coin and the background. The downside with more distance between coin and background is that the background will likely be getting less light, and thus under-exposed, so you may need to illuminate it separately from the coin.

Just want to point out, given the recent topic of repatriation, that there is a difference between repatriation to the assumed country of origin, and repatriation to the actual country the coins were found in. This case likely has both. The Eid Mar, and perhaps the Naxos, may not have a known find spot, but the Gaza dekadrachms do appear to. I'm sure many here can agree that if those Alexander dekadrachms were exported illegally from Palestine, they should go right back to Palestine. The same would presumably be true even somewhere like the UK with their PAS scheme - if you exported the items illegally, they should be returned to the UK. There's probably even more agreement here on the worrying issues surrounding any potential repatriation of the Eid Mar in particular, given its speculated minting origin and perhaps unknown find spot. An unfortunate outcome seems likely: the authorities may either rush to agreement and send it somewhere it might not actually "belong", or they sit on the coin for years to come until any disputes are cleared up. But the actual seizure may not have anything to do with repatriation per se, repatriation would be secondary. The seizure probably comes from the fact that the provenance was false and thus the import documentation was false. There's also the crime aspect, in which case the coin would be evidence. I assume HSI or similar are then within their powers to seize the coin, perhaps until Vecchi/Beale can offer any legitimate provenance that would allow for its import, but the grand larceny charges may indicate that the DA is pretty certain no such legitimate provenance exists. So while repatriation will likely become a sore issue for the Eid Mar, I don't see it as being the primary reason Beale and Vecchi have found themselves in hot water. So it strikes me as a bit odd that several collectors here and elsewhere are primarily concerned about this aspect, more than they are concerned about the alleged criminal aspects, even though repatriation laws and practices are probably not to blame for these coins being seized. Repatriation is what comes afterwards because the coins were seized. If everything was done above board, the coins wouldn't be getting repatriated, so your blame should be directed towards those facing criminal charges instead.

Again, if he had a reasonable belief that the provenance was legitimate, why would he try to pay the person who just told him it was false 100,000 Swiss francs? Why would this person, who personally believes it to be false, suddenly change their minds after being paid a sum of money? Regardless, Beale has supposedly admitted to knowing the provenance for the Gaza hoard dekadrachms was false anyway. Seems like the DA has one of those coins within their scope of the investigation, along with the Eid Mar and Naxos coins.

Ah ha, that makes much more sense. I was so confused 😅