idesofmarch01

In RIC II.3 (this entire volume is Hadrian), this coin appears to be number 820: Obv.: HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS Laureate head right, head only. Rev: COS III; S C in exergue; Ship right. Do you have the seller's description including size, weight, legend, and any other information?

When I first looked at this thread I thought the statue was fake, since any first-century Roman sculpture certainly would NOT have had a fig leaf covering this area. So if the statue IS authentic, I too would assume that the fig leaf was added centuries later. Maybe the restoration will include removal of the fig leaf.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia's article on bronze disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_disease): "As it relies upon the presence of chlorides, water, and oxygen, the absence of one of these three halts the progress, although any damage done is irreversible." (The emphasis is mine.) It's not the displaying of your coins in trays per se that caused the bronze disease to progress, but rather the exposure of the chloride ions to oxygen in air. It's my understanding, then, that if you've completely eliminated the chloride ions using the sodium sesquicarbonate solution, picking, and heating, then you do NOT have to worry about the return of bronze disease even if you expose the coins to air by displaying them in trays. The Wikipedia article is quite good and requires only a knowledge of high school chemistry to understand the process.

Isn't that the actor Harry Hamlin playing Perseus in the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans?

These really are excellent Travel Series denarii and I congratulate you on having such a discerning eye! The Oceanus is a particularly good find especially with the level of detail on the reverse figure. I think all the handwritten tags are from the same hand. Even though the third tag appears to have slight differences from the first two, I'm convinced it's the same handwriting due to the similarity of the "head right" as "hd r" abbreviation:

The Pantheon is still the largest unsupported concrete dome in the world: A tribute to the incredible brilliance of the anonymous Roman engineers who designed and built it. The inside is no less impressive, but my personal belief is that it would have been much more interesting had the original Roman god and goddess statues NOT been replaced by later religious iconography:

So, fundamentally, it appears that there is convincing evidence that the Eid Mar aureus was illegally removed from Greece sometime in the past and thus is being repatriated back to the Greek government. I can only assume that one or more of the ADA's informants provided this evidence and it was not cited specifically in the complaint against Beale. I wonder if we'll ever know the complete story about this coin's origins and shady provenance?

For certain, do not do anything else for now, until you've received a reply from the auction house. NEVER simply send back a coin until the auction house informs you how they want it sent, insured, picked up, etc. Otherwise you run the risk that they don't receive your return, and you end up being liable for the return method you chose. Return costs will be their responsibility. Until that issue has been satisfactorily settled, simply hold onto the coin. If you don't receive a reply from them within 1 - 2 weeks, contact them again. Clearly, you cannot legally keep the wrong coin unless the auction house somehow authorizes (in writing) this option. BTW, if you've already paid for the coin, it's unlikely that you can keep the wrong coin until you receive the correct coin (or a refund), since these are two different transactions and the auction house's Terms and Conditions probably do not cover this problem. Be sure to clarify with them whether you'll be getting a refund of your full payment including shipping and buyer's fees, or getting your original coin. Also, once you've finalized both the return of the wrong coin, and the refund or shipping of the correct coin, you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to return it ASAP -- their own timeframe to ship a coin is probably a reasonable timeframe for you to return one. 😉

This is precisely the issue that's been bothering me since I learned about the ADA's legal filing against Beale. Until I learn more about the theft/stolen property evidence in this case, it's hard for me to shake off this discomfort. Personally, I don't think that lack of provenance is reasonable evidence on which to base the accusation of theft. Neither do I think that knowingly seeking a fraudulent provenance proves that the coins were stolen, although it definitely makes me suspicious about their legality. DISCLAIMER: I generally want to believe that U.S. legal authorities are acting in good faith with sufficient facts and reason to believe their actions are justified. I also do not have any sympathy for actual theft of antiquities even in countries whose laws I think are unreasonable.

So let me ask a simple question: can the ADA simply assert that the coins are stolen [Edit: based on lack of provenance], or does he need to have reasonable facts to support his assertion? If it's the latter, than it would appear that those facts aren't being included in the filing but apparently have been presented to the judge.

Note that this article claims that the Eid Mar aureus has actually been recovered and will be returned/repatriated.

Yes, that's the way it appears to me too. So if they paid themselves an advance against the hammer price, it wouldn't necessarily appear to be an arms-length transaction.

It's common practice for very high-end coins and collections to receive an advance against the total hammer price, from the auction houses. If I had been the consignor of either of these coins I would have required a non-refundable advance of at least 50% of the expected hammer price. I would expect this to be the case for these two coins even if the coins were "owned" by one or more of Roma's principals. But if either Vecchi or Beale received an advance from Roma for these coins, the situation likely becomes more complicated legally since any losses that Roma (the entity) suffers from this legal action might be recoverable from the principals who received the advances.

Sorry, in the second part of my post ("I really don't understand your interpretation of the ADA's filing. Is your viewpoint on this filing that somehow Beale was duped into believing the false provenance, for which he had paid, and was only trying to get a true provenance for the coins by offering Informant #2 CHF 100,000?") I should have specifically responded to Sand, not you. I mixed two responses in one post and didn't clarify this. Mea culpa. But while I'll defer to DonnaML's opinion on this, "incorrect" and "false" certainly aren't equivalent, especially in a legal sense.

Thanks. That's what I assumed as well.

Informant #2 didn't tell Beale that the provenance was "incorrect" -- he told him that it was false: If Beale believed the provenance wasn't false, why wouldn't he just reassert his professional opinion that it was true and ignore Informant #2's opinion? Logically, the answer is that Beale knew the provenance was false and hoped that Informant #2 would sign the false provenance document or possibly even provide his own (false) signed provenance. I really don't understand your interpretation of the ADA's filing. Is your viewpoint on this filing that somehow Beale was duped into believing the false provenance, for which he had paid, and was only trying to get a true provenance for the coins by offering Informant #2 CHF 100,000?

My post did not state that paying for a provenance can't be legitimate -- it obviously can be. Rather, I was noting that there's a distinct difference between paying for provenance research vs. paying for the provenance itself, and Beale has already admitted to knowingly paying for a fraudulent provenance. I hope that clarifies my post sufficiently.

I'm pretty sure that your interpretation of the ADA's complaint is incorrect. Here's the actual language: The ADA is being precise in using the word "provenance" rather than the phrase "provenance research," which are two very different things. Paying for a provenance to be created is what constitutes the fraud being alleged, and the fraud to which Mr. Beale admitted. Beale paid for the creation of a false provenance.

Here's the issue that still disturbs me about the ADA's filing: While the filing asserts that the two coins (Eid Mar aureus and Naxos tetradrachm) are "Stolen Property," this assertion appears to be based solely on information from the ADA's informants (mainly Informant #2) and is not supported in the filing by any factual information (e.g., "it appears the Eid Mar aureus was part of the looted Gaza Hoard" or something similar). Nor is it factually supported by any entity claiming ownership of these two coins. Rather, it seems that the ADA is asserting ownership of the coins by the countries from which the coins would have originated, mainly based on both coins' lack of provenance, therefore they must be stolen. The fraudulent provenance is a different matter -- it has been admitted factually by Mr. Beale and verified independently by Informant #2 -- but it doesn't necessarily prove that the coins were stolen. At best, it seems to support the conclusion that Mr. Beale can't prove these coins weren't stolen from their countries of origin. This isn't the same as proving they actually were stolen. So my concern is that any coin that lacks a provenance, especially high-value coins that would produce equally high-profile publicity for an ADA -- is fair game for a legal entity to assert that it's stolen ("You can't produce a verifiable provenance, can you?"). Am I the only one who has this concern? It's possible that the ADA is withholding information proving that the coins were actually stolen, or factually supporting their ownership by entities other than Beale and Vecchi, but this seems unlikely. Are there further legal explanations and subtleties about the coins' ownership that I'm missing here?

But the complaint doesn't assert that these two coins were looted from the Gaza hoard, though -- at least not as far as I read the complaint. So citing this prior history appears to be simply an attempt to cast aspersions on one of the individuals, rather than being specifically relevant to the case.

I, too, have been having the same difficulty understanding this specific point ever since I read the ADA's filing over a week ago. There are four Informants on whom the complaint relies, but none of these informants actually claims to own the coins in question or specify who the owner is. Implicitly, the ownership thus seems to be the country of Greece for the Eid Mar aureus, and Italy for the Naxos tetradrachm. But again, I'm not sure that this is legally correct. Can theft and fraud be asserted in a criminal case without specifically stating from whom the theft occurred? Can anyone clarify this issue?

My first step would be to contact the auction house and ask them for advice. They'll certainly have been asked this question many times, and might have a preferred shipper, freight forwarder, etc. that they would suggest.

Asking price of around $220K. The seller is surprisingly candid about the fact that this coin sold less than a year ago at a Nomos auction for approximately $110K including buyer's premium. Pretty healthy markup...

My example of this type was attributed to Thrace when I acquired it in the Roma II auction in 2011: DOMITIAN 69 - 81 AD. AE Sestertius (26.88 g.) Thrace 80-81 AD RIC 509 Titus CAES DIVI AVG VESP F DOMITIANVS COS VII, laureate head right / S C across field, Mars walking right, holding spear in right hand, trophy over left shoulder RIC classifies these types as "Eastern Mint -- Thrace (?)"

I can see why this would be your favorite period! That's quite a flashy collection of reverses -- I never would have suspected so many cool reverses existed!