Money-laundering laws trip up coin collectors

A caution for Europe-bound collectors:

The new money-laundering laws appear inadvertently to have created a problem for the coin trade.

The issue came to light at the last Paris Coin Fair on March 13, when auctioneers Spink, who attended to promote their sale of the Marshall Collection in London on March 31, presented the catalogue but none of the lots, as would normally be expected.

Under the new laws, all cash transactions totalling €15,000 (about £10,000) or more must be registered, and there are fears that French Customs officers are interpreting the law so literally that members of the trade carrying valuable collections of coins across borders may be stopped.

A spokesman from Spink said that about a year ago a member of their staff was held up because they did not have a list of the coins in their hand luggage even though they had no obligation to do so.

Unfortunately, it is all too common for laws to be passed without commonsense exceptions for the old and antique. When I lived in California, state handgun laws applied equally to a new Glock and a 16th-century wheellock. I never heard of them being enforced when it came to antique arms, but they were very much on the books. And probably still are, since the old-and-antique lobby is pretty much nonexistent -- as opposed to, say, the entertainment industry lobby, which makes sure that California weapons laws always have an out for film, TV, and stage props. It isn't just weapons, either -- ivory and other bits of endangered beasties have also ended up on the restricted list, without any distinction between old and new.

Nor is the Old World any better, as the article cited above illustrates. It isn't just indifferent Eurocrats, either. The French, for example, are sticklers for hallmarking any bits of precious metal that cross their borders. I know of a few pieces of 4th-century Roman silver that ended up so stamped, and a French pen collector of my acquaintance ran into real trouble once when returning from a Swiss pen show: he had brought along several gold and silver pieces from his personal collection, but a number weren't of French manufacture and so lacked French assay marks. He was treated as if he were smuggling grey-market Rolexes, even though the pens were all at least 60 years old.

Though the internet has had a huge impact in bringing collectors (and dealers) together across national boundaries, taking collections across national borders remains as involved as it ever was, with little prospect of change anytime soon.

Posted by David on April 17, 2004 4:57 PM