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Homs is being shelled to smithereens and thousands of people trapped in the city are either dead and injured or about to become so. I was interested to see just how many coins minted in this city are on V-Coins at the moment. The search feature (under "Emesa") revealed 69. Fifty eight are Roman (many Severan) coins, mostly silver issues, nine are Byzantine or Arab/Byzantine issues. Those I looked at were accompanied by zero information on how they left the source country or when and where they had been since. I wonder whether it will dawn on dealers and collectors that in this difficult period for the countries around the south and east shores of the Mediterranean, there really should be. Searching for "Syria" gives 1597 items (603 priced over 100 dollars, 34 of which were priced at over 1000 dollars). How many of the coins coming onto the US market in 2012 are there as a result of the current conflicts in the Islamic world? How many dealers are in fact selling "blood coins"? Do US dealers and coin buyers even have any intention of showing that they care about the answer to that question?
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Illustration: My map from an earlier post, red are US-MOU-countries, brown are countries which have seen serious conflict in recent months. The coloured dots are where coins sold in a recent ACCG auction were originally issued.![]()
Homs is being shelled to smithereens and thousands of people trapped in the city are either dead and injured or about to become so. I was interested to see just how many coins minted in this city are on V-Coins at the moment. The search feature (under "Emesa") revealed 69. Fifty eight are Roman (many Severan) coins, mostly silver issues, nine are Byzantine or Arab/Byzantine issues. Those I looked at were accompanied by zero information on how they left the source country or when and where they had been since. I wonder whether it will dawn on dealers and collectors that in this difficult period for the countries around the south and east shores of the Mediterranean, there really should be. Searching for "Syria" gives 1597 items (603 priced over 100 dollars, 34 of which were priced at over 1000 dollars). How many of the coins coming onto the US market in 2012 are there as a result of the current conflicts in the Islamic world? How many dealers are in fact selling "blood coins"? Do US dealers and coin buyers even have any intention of showing that they care about the answer to that question?
Illustration: My map from an earlier post, red are US-MOU-countries, brown are countries which have seen serious conflict in recent months. The coloured dots are where coins sold in a recent ACCG auction were originally issued.
