As the cauldron of opposed ideas about cultural property continues to simmer, some members of groups such as the AIA and SAFE are calling these days for the “ethical collecting” of ancient coins.  What these groups actually call for is absolute proof (in the form of recorded provenance) that any coin purchased by a collector was in private hands before 1973 or was exported legally (by permit) from its place of origin.  Collecting coins without this recorded provenance would in their view be unethical (if not illegal).  Considering that there are literally millions of ancient coins circulating freely throughout the world at this moment, any scheme that would automatically make them illicit for lack of a documented past is poorly thought out.   Any such broad sweeping requirement would probably mean an end to collecting for all but the most affluent of collectors and would certainly have a devastating effect on the licit ancient coin market.  Why are these groups calling for a de facto end to the legal marketplace?  The claim they doggedly adhere to is that the collecting of undocumented coins leads directly to the looting of archaeological sites.   This claim is often stated in deliberately provocative terms, seeking to unnerve collectors and obfuscate the facts of the matter.  This article will attempt to shed some light on the issue of coin registration and recording of provenance.

Virtually all ancient coins sold in the U.S. ancient coin market today are sold in compliance with the existing laws of the United States. There are three current restrictions on the importation of ancient coins into the United States.  In October of 2004, Congress passed HR-1047, an omnibus trade bill, that incorporated within it a line item restricting the importation of antiquities from Iraq. Two additional sets of restrictions have been instituted by the U.S. State Department through authority vested in the department by the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983.  As of July, 2007 coins of Cyprus can only be imported with specified documentation and Chinese coins from before AD 907 were added to the list of restricted items in January 2009.  Coins from other countries, and all coins documented as being outside of the aforementioned countries before these dates, may be imported legally.  There is of course the usual exception for stolen objects valued at $5,000 or more.  Objects in this category may fall under provisions of the National Stolen Property Act and their importation could conceivably lead to prosecution.  Since extremely few if any seizures of coins have occurred under the Iraq, Cyprus and Chinese restrictions,  one must assume that the United States marketplace is made up in bulk of legally acquired coins.
The licit status of coins currently in collections and in the market is quite important as these coins are legally private property.  Any proposed scheme to require registration or documentation of every coin would necessarily need to address these legally owned coins that lack recorded provenance.  Would such a scheme mandate that all existing coins be registered?  If so, who would pay for registration and what would be sufficient proof of ownership?  At the very least, a scheme to require proof of origin for every coin would add enormous expense as collectors struggled to register millions of legal coins at great cost and considerable effort.  Without some form of registration, how could this legal property be sold in the future?  In essence, failure to register a coin would by default make it illicit.  This has implications far beyond the need for cultural property protection and should concern every citizen of a free-world nation.  When someone suggests to a collector that "ethical collecting" mandates that all coins be documented and registered then I urge the collector to ask what is being proposed for the millions of currently legal and undocumented coins.  The answer to that one question will be quite telling.
Aside from the very real concerns about private property rights and their protection under any proposed registration scheme, it’s also worthwhile examining the supposed problems of looting and loss of context.  To look at looting it is necessary to divide source countries into two types: The first type is those countries where detecting and owning old coins is legal.  The other type is States that have outlawed detecting and where the State has declared that it owns all artifacts in or on the ground even on private property.  Obviously, even in countries where metal detecting is legal, certain areas are and should be protected.  But even where coins are detected legally, extracted legally, and sold legally, some archaeologists still call for proof that the items were also documented.  The reason is that these archaeologists view archaeological context as the most critical piece of information that a coin can offer.  Not only that, they appear to treat all archaeological context as equally important.  Even when hundreds or thousands of instances of a coin type are found to exist in a particular place, they still demand that the find data be recorded for each and every piece.  This idea of context is core to their philosophy and they often do not appreciate the value of coins out of the archaeological context.  They rarely value coins as objects of art, narrative messages, economic and historical records or such.  So in the end what is being proposed is a Byzantine system where every minutia must be kept on record in perpetuity.

States that forbid all private excavation and ownership of ancient coins actually contribute to the problem rather than to a solution.  Without a licit market these states create a system of smugglers and shady middleman that will surely not record their finds.  If recording find information is of prime importance then these countries need to change their laws.  It seems obvious that the British system is superior that in Egypt, for example, as the former allows for many, and certainly the most important, finds to be recorded while the latter encourages no such thing.  But for hardline archaeologists "many"  is never good enough.  If every last coin isn’t recorded, they believe that context and cultural heritage will be lost forever.  Collectors feel backed against the wall by an extreme ideology that offers no compromise and little rationality. 
Let's examine the context.  Archaeologists  use vivid language such as “coins being ripped from their context” to illustrate their view that archaeological context is of extreme importance.  While it is obvious that knowing where a coin was found sometimes provides interesting and valuable information, this is just one of many contexts for that coin.  There is the social context in which the coin was created, the historical context of this coin to others of the same period, the context of this coin's imagery as part of an iconographic program, the context of this coin's manufacture in terms of workmanship, metallurgy and technology.  Then there is the context of the coin in private collections, in museums, in educational exhibits, and onward for the life of that coin.  When one assigns primary or sole value to the archaeological context, a disregard for other legitimate scholarly disciplines and for the rights of collectors is inescapable.  Coins have so much more to tell us than their archaeological context reveals.  They are often one of the few unaltered physical records from the past, primary source material that has not suffered from being translated and copied by generations of monks or scribes.  Additional information can be extracted from coins through an analysis of overstrikes, countermarks, ancient graffiti and other post production changes.  Coins usually can tell about the context of their creation especially when they bear mint marks and mint control devices.  These contexts are completely independent of the archaeological context.  Then we cannot dismiss the context of coins in collections.  A collector may assemble a series of coins that tells a story that wouldn't be possible to see by merely looking at the archaeological context.  A collector may create an educational exhibit at local or national coins shows, in such a context that the coin educates many others.  Much the same can be said of coins used by Ancient Coins for Education (ACE) to inspire young children.  These contexts are just as valuable as the archaeological context and should not play a lesser role.  Pictures or replicas of coins do not inspire people in the same way that the genuine article does.  When it comes to context it is almost absurd to focus on a single context for a coin and to act as if it is the most important.

Hopefully a rational discussion will someday materialize between collectors and archaeologists who can agree that collecting adds value.  That collectors can make new discoveries, that private collections  can offer  views of history that won’t be seen in academic settings, that coins can have value in contexts that are not archaeological and sometimes even without context as works of art.  Were such a discussion possible, then methods to minimize looting and maximize reporting could be constructed.  Voluntary registration of global finds in a database might be a step.  Working together to persuade states that draconian laws do little to advance knowledge could be a cooperative initiative.  Collaboratively it would be possible to build up a marketplace that records more information and loses less context.  However, the mantra that every coin must bear a record of provenance or be registered is really a call to end private collecting for the masses and thus must be rejected.