Saturday 19 November 2011

The "Chamelon Antiquities" Supplier Game

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"Hi Group", blithely warbles your friendly internet dealer "Alex" [Alex Stanichev, Winettka, United States]:
Here is the link to all the fine ancient coins and artifacts ending soon. http://stores.ebay.com/cameleoncoins-and-artifacts
Let us have a look, and perhaps we can play a game. The dealer does not for a single one of these items give any information about the place it "surfaced". The buyer is expected obviously to part with his money no-questions-asked. Which ones of them (including the fakes) could not have come from a heavily looted country like Bulgaria and adjacent regions of the Balkans and Danubian limes? (Stanichev is a Bulgarian name - there is a famous politician with the same surname at the moment). Do the ones for which such a source is not likely fall into any sort of a group?

Most of these so-called "minor antiquities" offered by "Cameleon" are of metal (copper alloy mostly), how are they located and gathered up? Cameleon coins and artefacts has for a long time specialised in supplying the so-called "minor antiquities market" with complete pottery and glass vessels all of Roman date. Where can one most frequently dig up complete Roman pottery and glass vessels? Ask an archaeologist.

How are these objects getting into (UNESCO 1970 Convention member state since 1983) the United States of America? Ask the US Customs. The choice of name "Chameleon" may not be accidental. How come they (like the products of a dozen or so gentlemen of the Trade with similar commodities) have been openly sold under the noses of US archaeologists on EBay under that name since the end of March 2004? Ask US archaeologists. The AIA supports an MOU with a country like Bulgaria now, but we'd all like to know what active public outreach they had been doing before that about the open no-questions-asked sale of material like this in the long years of the open sale of material like this under their noses.

Vignette: Ćmielów chameleon.

2 comments:

PrayForRain said...

Funny I just googled the name of the guy with the same suspicion. Now is the end of 2016 and this shame is still going on. The Bulgarian authority, the US authority, EBay and probably hundreds of customers who are shopping and don't question, nothing can stop can stop them. Him and his friends with the metal detectors and shovels in the nights.

Paul Barford said...

What will stop them is the sites running out of artefacts to sell, but then, as at Archar, they'll just bring along a bulldozer...

 
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