Ute Wartenburg, Director of the American Numismatic Society on Hoard Law 1 1

[Nutmeg Coin]

There is a good editorial from ANS Director on the law regarding hoards in CW:

 

"Gold always captures people’s imaginations. So when a huge hoard of U.S. gold coins, found in California, was announced recently, coin collectors, journalists and the public at large were fascinated by the story.

 

"Walking their dog, a couple found on their property a treasure of over 1,400 coins, valued at $10 million. The hoard contains great numismatic rarities, most in Mint condition, and is likely to be this country’s most important coin hoard ever. More details emerged about the circumstances of the find, in a story carefully orchestrated by a public relations firm and a California coin dealer.

 

"Despite the desire to remain anonymous, the couple, now known as Mary and John, described how they found the first of several cans of coins, which they carried home only to find a gold treasure. Eventually, coin experts were consulted and an agreement with Amazon reached, where most of the coins will be sold. Mary and John describe themselves as having had, just “like a lot of people lately,” financial trials. Their find will allow them to keep the property where they have lived for many years as well as donate some money to charity.

 

"A wonderful story with a happy ending, but is it really? When I read almost weekly discussions about looted antiquities from Mediterranean countries, I wonder why the same standards of archaeological scholarship are not applied to finds in the United States. In the case of this new find, numismatic scholars neither know anything about the exact find spot (“northern California”) nor the surrounding terrain. Not even the various coin varieties represented in this hoard are clear, as only a tiny selection of rarities has been publicized. The entire find is unlikely to get any full publication, if nobody assembles a complete record and makes it available to the public.

 

"Having worked for over 20 years reconstructing coin hoards largely illicitly excavated in countries such as Greece, Turkey, or Egypt, which often appear in comparable circumstances on the coin market as this new U.S. hoard, I see clear parallels in the attitude to such archaeological finds in the United States and abroad. Foremost, they are treasure, which the finders guard, often in contravention of national or international laws, in order to maximize their financial profit. Rumors about discoveries emphasize the remote areas of find spots, the poverty of the finder, and the need for secrecy. Just as in the California hoard story, the archaeological context is of very little interest, and thus the loss of historical knowledge is considerable.

 

"When one considers the various legal issues, claims from potential title holders, tax issues, and general privacy concerns, it is not surprising to see that the finders of the Saddle Ridge Hoard have been overly secretive. Sadly, much historical information is lost when such important archaeological finds — and this hoard is most certainly in this category — are not properly recorded and published.

 

"People often ask why this archaeological context matters, in particular for objects such as these late 19th century gold coins. Quite simply, it can tell the story of objects such as the Saddle Ridge Hoard. It might answer questions that are now at the center of the debate: Who buried the hoard? When did they bury this impressive sum of money? And what caused them to hide these coins and from whom?

 

"When more such hoards are properly recorded, patterns can emerge to tell us something about the history of the area in which these burials occurred. The coins themselves, once cleaned, look no different from any other California gold coins: it is rather the circumstances of their burial that are so interesting.

 

"As long as we do not show more interest in local history, knowledge will be lost. In countries such as the United Kingdom, similar hoard finds have been treated differently. The old law of Treasure Trove has been modernized to encourage proper reporting of finds. This might serve as a model for the United States. How much can be gained from an open and public investigation is clearly shown by the case of a different find of U.S. gold coins, this one in London’s Borough of Hackney in 2007. Finders discovered a hoard of 80 U.S. gold double eagle coins in a garden, which they declared to the English authorities. After some research and an inquest, the son of the original owner, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, was located and the hoard declared his property.

 

"One can only wonder what information might become available if a similar process were applied to the Saddle Ridge Hoard. For now, the finders and coin dealers benefit from this situation, but not the general public or the descendants of the person who owned and buried the hoard over a century ago."

http://www.coinworld.com/voices/Saddle-Ridge-Hoard-US-archaeological-scholarship-lags.html#

 

Do you agree or disagree that US hoard law lags behind the law in Europe?

[RWB]

There are greater potential benefits in places where there are layers of civilizations and their artifacts. Europe, Asia Minor and N. Africa have money-using cultures extending to the beginning of coined money. Numismatic items are an integral part of archeological study, and in some instances are the only clue we have to ancient rulers, trade patterns and population movements. (Take a close look at the Seleucid Empire and other successors to Alexander III especially in the transition to the Parthian state between 140-130 BCE.)

 

In North America there were no coin-using pre-European cultures. The earliest coins relate to colonists and were of European manufacture or imitative of European models. While colonial coins and medals can help date various archeological sites, they otherwise provide only limited ancillary information. Treasure finds such as the Baltimore and New Orleans hoards, and the Saddle Ridge hoard are interesting and possibly numismatically informative. But they do not typically contain useful archeological or cultural data. That is, we are very unlikely to learn anything about California from the circumstances of the Saddle Ridge hoard. I am confident that the owners and Kagin’s documented the site and will eventually release specific information. For now, it is best for all that the site remain unidentified – even if only for the peace and quiet of the land owners.

 

As to division of treasure, the land owner is the primary owner since conveyance usually includes all rights. There is a responsibility to examine prior land owners and attempt to identify a source for the treasure. If it can be established that a previous land owner hid the treasure, then their decedents should receive a modest portion – say ten percent – but certainly not the entirety as in the 2007 Hackney garden instance. (I feel that one who hides something accepts the implicit risk of loss.)

 

[PS: Some of the vitriolic and personally nasty comments posted on another message board are way out of line. Dr. Wartenberg Kagan is a distinguished scholar whose “research interests focus on the early archaic coins and economy of Greece and the Achaemenid Empire, and in particular on the role of the earliest coins in electrum and silver in the 6th century BCE. She is also preparing a book on the coinage of the Thessalian city of Pherae, which examines the role of coinage in a region of Greece, which was primarily known for its agricultural richness. Since 1991, she has been working on Coin Hoards, a series dedicated to collecting all information on ancient Greek hoards, which she now edits with Andrew Meadows.”

 

“Educated in Saarbrücken, Germany, Dr. Wartenberg Kagan was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where she got a doctorate in papyrology. Her publications include over 50 books and articles on papyrology and numismatics, including Coins Hoards VIII and Coin Hoards IX (with Andrew Meadows), After Marathon. War, Society and Money in Fifth-Century Greece; The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vol. LXIV.”]

 

[CaptHenway]

As I said ATS, the only archaelogical loss was to the student of late 19th century metal cans.

[Nutmeg Coin]

There is a guest commentary this week in the online edition of Coin World by Don Kagin responding to Dr. Ute Wartenberg's piece. Some good factual points. Page 14. http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/CoinWorld/

[Greenstang]

You lost me. What this to do with the original post six years ago on buried treasure.

Need JustBob with his picture

Edited July 23, 2020 by Greenstang

[kbbpll]

1 hour ago, Greenstang said:

You lost me. What this to do with the original post six years ago on buried treasure.

Some robot dredged up a 6 year old thread to spam their BS website because it has "law" in the title.

[Henri Charriere]

On 3/31/2014 at 10:13 AM, Nutmeg Coin said:

 

 

Do you agree or disagree that US hoard law lags behind the law in Europe?

I agree but I cannot help but recall that the recovery of artifacts found at the site of the 1857 sinking of the S.S. Central America (just off the North Carolina coast) was meticulously documented, researched and part of the proceeds sold before greed set in -- and the next thing you know, the expedition's head is arrested, convicted and sentenced to a term in Federal prison.