There is increasing pressure on museums, antiquity and coin dealers, and collectors to be able to prove the provenance of their ancient coins to the satisfaction of foreign countries that otherwise will claim these objects as cultural patrimony. Should coins and other antiquities be declared cultural patrimony these objects might be targeted to be repatriated due to when or how the objects were exported.
On March 22 one of three known fabled Roman Eid Mar aureii of Brutus was seized and turned over to the government of Greece, allegedly having been illegally exported and due to its published provenance having been allegedly faked.
On February 2 Manhattan (New York City) District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. announced the repatriation of 14 antiquities collectively valued at nearly $2.5 million to Italy. According to the MDA, the objects were recovered from several high-profile antiquities’ traffickers and smugglers. The District Attorney’s Office reported having returned 214 stolen Italian antiquities valued at approximately $35 million in the past seven months.
On January 10 the MDA announced Roma Numismatics Limited owner Richard Beale had been arrested for allegedly falsifying the provenance of some very high-profile ancient coins. Two of the coins have been identified as an example of the 42 B.C. Eid Mar gold aureus marking the assassination of Julius Caesar and a 430 B.C. silver coin of Naxos in Sicily. The latter coin was described by the MDA as one of the “rarest and most prized ancient coins in the world.”
According to the complaint filed against Beale, Beale and Italian coin dealer Italo Vecchi paid for false ownership history documents for both coins. The allegedly fake provenance indicates the coins came “from the collection of the Baron Dominique de Chambrier.”
The Eid Mar aureii are thought to have originated from Greece. The silver denarius version of the same coin is listed as Seaby 1439 in David R. Sear’s Roman Coins and Their Values. The denarius is identified as having been struck in either Western Asia Minor (modern Turkey) or Macedonia (in modern Greece) in the summer or autumn of 42 B.C.
On two occasions during 2020 the gold coin in question was shipped to the United States accompanied by U.S. customs paperwork declaring the coin as originating either from Italy or Turkey.
The complaint filed in a Manhattan court reads that Beale and Vecchi “deceived potential buyers by creating false provenance for the Eid Mar coin and the Sicily Naxos coin so that both coins would be viewed as legitimate and ascribed a certain value.”
The allegedly fake Chambrier provenance appeared when both coins were previously auctioned in October and November 2020 in London. Beale is additionally accused of purchasing five other coins from a convicted antiquity trafficker which were looted from the Gaza Strip in 2017. Beale is charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, conspiracy, and scheme to defraud.
The potential fallout from this situation is that the public may interpret that fake provenance is commonplace within the business of coins. Despite neither Beale nor Vecchi having been convicted of anything relating to these two coins at the time this
