OT, the dark side of antiquities collections

Hyperion

I know this isn't coin collection per se (maybe only partial) and nothing to do with PCGS, but it's interesting to see where the European/World antiquities collectors are contributing the cash for IS to continue their horrendous efforts.

I just thought it was worth the read. When you admire private collections sometimes the history of the artifacts go away from the nice and good in unexpected ways.


http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31485439

The trade in antiquities is one of Islamic State's main sources of funding, along with oil and kidnapping. For this reason the UN Security Council last week banned all trade in artefacts from Syria, accusing IS militants of looting cultural heritage to strengthen its ability "to organise and carry out terrorist attacks".



"Everyone from the Lebanese police to Mohammed the smuggler and Ahmed the go-between said the main market was Europe. In the UK there have been no prosecutions or arrests for selling looted Syrian artefacts but Vernon Rapley, who ran the Metropolitan Police's art and antiquities squad for almost a decade, says too much shouldn't be read into this. "I'm quite confident that there have been seizures of material like this," he confidently states, as we stroll around his new workplace, the Victoria and Albert museum, where he is director of security.

Rapley still liaises closely with his former police unit and he is certain that artefacts from Syria are being sold here. He wants the trade in these antiquities to become "socially repugnant and unacceptable" so that in the future, he says, "we don't have interior decorators looking for these things to decorate people's houses"."

WillieBoyd2

This is an old story, coin collectors are supposedly funding whatever bad guys are out there at the time.