Start your new year off right and help the ancient coin collectors in the United States!

On December 17, I posted “First They Came For The Ancient Coins…” about the State Department accepting public comment on the extension of the Memoranda of Understanding with Cyprus by the State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC). The deadline for submitting comments is on January 3, 2012—TOMORROW!

Recently, the American Numismatic Association joined the cause. “We are deeply concerned that ever-expanding import restrictions have gravely damaged the ability of American citizens to learn about ancient cultures through handling common ancient coinage of the sort that is avidly collected worldwide,” ANA President Tom Hallenbeck said. “Such regulations, to the extent they exist at all, should be narrowly tailored to restrict goods that could only be the product of looting from archaeological sites. Coins cannot meet this test. By their nature, ancient coins have circulated far from their place of origin, have been extensively collected throughout the world in modern centuries, and like common mass-produced items, ancient coins do not normally have any verifiable provenance.”

To submit comments three pages in length or less electronically, go here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=DOS-2011-0135-0002.

For more information and ideas of what to say, please reread my earlier post.

Allowing the State Department to entertain these types of actions should be abhorrent to any collector because if it begins with the ancient coins, then where does it stop? To borrow the concept from Pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First they came…”:

First they came for the ancient coins,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a ancient coin collector.

Then they came for all foreign coins,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a foreign coin collector.

Then they came for the obsolete currency,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a obsolete currency collector.

Then they came for the pattern coins,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a pattern coin collector.

Then they came for my silver and gold United State coins,
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Make it your resolution to help maintain the hobby for all of us!

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