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It just goes to show this can happen to any collector in any hobby..




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...m_hp_ref=crime

Aloha! Reading an article like this really makes me want to gNASH my teeth! dave

I'm confused after reading the article - he was arrested for taking ancient Italian coins out of the country, but in fact they turned out to be forgeries? I could understand him being arrested for fraud, but it doesn't seem he committed the crime he was arrested for.

I think he was arrested for trying to sell coins that he knew were extracted from the country illegally after the 1909 date. They then turned out to be fake. IOW, he was in possession of something that it was illegal to possess, although it wasn't what he thought it was. All perfectly clear, eh?

So, he's in trouble because he THOUGHT he was committing a crime.

By that logic, if I thought I was stealing a car and it turned out to be my own, I could still go to jail. Odd.

Similar to poaching an animal that turns out to be a wood fake. Or trafficking in Coke that is really baby powder. For the latter, sometimes the act is worse than the crime - when the buyer finds out he was ripped off, innocent bystanders could be affected.

Many avid ancient coin collectors have lost faith in the hobby due to forgeries becoming too good and too rampant. I am one of those collectors. In the past ten years I have watched that market collapse upon itself, sad really. I had more money in sestertius then cards, too bad for me...

Italy, Greece, if you're reading this thread :rolleyes: stop harassing collectors and start harassing certain museums if you really want your treasures back...