An ancient coin carries its history in the surface. Scour it bright and you delete the price, and often the chance to tie it to a find spot. In the overview Security for collectors it sits with the pieces where theft and the law stand side by side.

The legal position first

Many ancient coins are legal in the trade, with a provenance that can be stated. Some come from looted excavations, and you may not buy those in order to "save" them. Before you buy, you require a provenance that you write down: auction, dealer, year, lot number. Without that line, the coin in case of doubt becomes a problem, not a treasure. The authority and the cultural property protection law decide the individual case. This text does not replace that.

Theft and decay

In the house they go the way other coins go: album, tin, backpack. The big private robbery remains Coconut Grove, described with the gold coins. Patina suffers from PVC, from damp, and from every attempt to clean. You store them dry, dark, in inert material, in the anchored cabinet, once the sum warrants it.

What you write down

Mint, denomination, metal, diameter, the provenance line, a photo of both sides with a scale. The photos and the invoices sit in the document cabinet. A coin without this folder is a memory after a burglary.