Dig4Coins

As a British Airways jetliner touched down in Baltimore on April 15th, U.S. citizens busily writing last minute checks to the IRS could hardly have anticipated that their tax dollars would be used by the U.S. State Department to wage an ideological war against coin collectors. Part of the cargo of BA flight 229/16 that day was a small packet of very common, inexpensive, Cypriot and Chinese coins being imported by the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG). The entry of these coins, forbidden under bilateral agreements with Cyprus and China, marked the launch of a test case to determine whether the State Department has banned their importation properly under a 1983 law dealing with cultural property protection.

As mandated, U.S. Customs detained the coins upon arrival. The ACCG now plans to use this detention as a vehicle to strike down the unprecedented regulations banning importation of whole classes of ancient coins. The collectors' advocacy group claims that, among other abnormalities, the decision process for these agreements was orchestrated contrary to the spirit and intent of governing law. Moreover, they claim that the State Department misled Congress and the public about its decision not to follow the recommendations of its own Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), a group of experts charged with advising the president on how best to balance the goals of protecting cultural heritage against the needs of a legitimate trade in cultural artifacts.

Washington attorney Peter K. Tompa, of the law firm Bailey & Ehrenberg PLLC, will represent the ACCG. According to Tompa, "Research and discovery to date in a separate ongoing Freedom of Information Act case strongly suggests that State Department bureaucrats acted improperly by adding coins to import restrictions on Chinese cultural goods without any formal request from PRC officials. Even more troubling is their July 2007 decision to impose import restrictions on coins of Cypriot type, which appears to have been adopted contrary to CPAC recommendations."

The ACCG (http://accg.us) is a non-profit organization promoting the free and independent collecting of coins from antiquity. It advocates protection of cultural resources through programs like the United Kingdoms Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme that recognize public participation.

Source: news.prnewswire.com