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Dodgy antiquities dealer or dodgy seller or dodgy both?
Many years ago, I worked from one of the largest #antique centres in the south of England. It was mainly Georgian and Victorian furniture, but we had book dealers, china dealers, and an antiquities and coin dealer well-known in his field.
I don’t know why (well, thinking about it, I do) but coin and #antiquities dealers had a bad reputation then and still quite a few have today; let’s face it any coin that is 600 years old must have been stolen or lost at some point so they could all be dealing in stolen goods. In addition, if a metal detectorist comes in with a Roman crossbow brooch which he “Found in his garden” what can the dealer do but believe him? A hoard of Roman #Denarii may not be as believable and an item that was clearly made overseas maybe sadly lacking its import documents.
Just a note on #antiquities here. Many are not
legally owned by the seller as the person they
bought them from probably did not legally own them either. If they are a metal detecting find they must either have been found on the finder’s land or on land that he (or she) had permission to detect on. Many farmers have no idea what’s been found on their land; they are the legal owner of an object unless they have an agreement with the detectorist. In the U.K. so many open fields have been nighthawked (the detectorists illegally searching at night with no permission), which can be big business and latterly has links with organized crime.
Sadly, this means that there are slim pickings for the legitimate detectorists, who by and large keep their finds for their personal collections. They are interested in the item’s historical worth, not its monetary worth. It is often claimed that pieces for sale are from an “old collection”, but most understand that this is not true, so many are just simply stolen goods. This is the main reason that we will not buy anything made pre-1600. For more information on legitimate metal detecting look at “The Searcher” magazine. If you would like to buy antiquities find an established dealer, ask for as much provenance as possible and obtain a detailed receipt.
In addition to the above so many pieces have been illegally imported over the past 100 years or simply brought back after a Grand Tour. Which leads me back to that antiques centre.
Picture the scene. We are in about 1997, it is a Saturday morning, and the antiques centre is busy. The #antiquities dealer has his usual bunch of customers (all men) chatting about detecting, drinking coffee, and studying his latest acquisitions on his stand.
A lady in her late 60’s is following one of the floor walkers and is directed to the antiquities dealer. She has a tartan shopping trolley with her and smiles charmingly at the dealer. It transpires that she has some #Shabti’s to sell (#Shabti’s are mummiform figures found in #Egyptian tombs and up to 300mm tall, these were in a blue / green glaze).
She had four #shabti’s to sell and the dealer asked where she had got them from – this is where it all gets out of hand, she told him that her father was in #Egypt with Howard Carter in the 1920’s and that these pieces should have gone to the #Ashmolean Museum in Oxford but somehow they ended up in her loft….
Well, this was every Christmas at once for the dealer, and even better, she only wanted £50.00 each! As soon as she left, they took pride of place in his best cabinet and were for sale at £260.00 each. He had sold the lot by Tuesday. They sold too quickly; he had undervalued them.
Imagine his surprise two weeks later when the lady came back! She had found four more shabtis in the loft; he bought them all and sold them for £320.00 each. She returned twice more, once with four and then again with 30. She said she had found a sealed crate full of them in the corner of the loft. The dealer had to be clever here, he paid her £1500.00 but only put two out at a time; he thought that people may get suspicious with too many on show. Sales were slowing down as there are only so many people who want a shabti but time was on his side and he had 30 £320.00’s in his safe.
A couple of weeks went by, and I think that he may have sold one or two. One Tuesday afternoon a young couple came in and they were chatting about the #shabti’s. They had bought one of the first batch from him, as he trusted them he disclosed where he got them from and the fact that they should be in the museum.
This is where everything went very wrong. The couple presented the one they’d purchased from him a couple of weeks before, and then a second one; they were exactly the same, even down to the colour of the glaze and the hieroglyphics on the front.
They had bought the first from the dealer for £260.00, and the other from the gift shop at The British Museum for under a fiver.
I have never seen someone’s face drain so quickly! There was no loft, no links to Howard Carter, no diversion of antiquities on their way to the #Ashmolean. There was just a sweet lady in her late 60’s who had been jumping on the train every now and again and nipping to The British Museum. She knew that that dealer’s greed would control him, and he would not be able to refuse the last 30. The £9600.00 in his safe had just turned into £150.00. Now he knew that they were copies, he could not risk selling any more of them.
To add insult into injury, five more were returned over the next couple of years and he had to make a full refund. The rest are still at large, they could be anywhere in the world and sold many times. Have you got one?
Of course, the lady who sold them to him at £50.00 each was the best part of £1900.00 up.
As a postscript to this true story, I asked the dealer what he had done with the 50+ fake Shabti’s. “I was so fed up I chucked them in the river.” Well, “fed up” were not his exact words, but you get the drift! I suppose that is sort of responsible, but imagine archaeologists in 300 years’ time trying to work out how and why artefacts from ancient Egypt ended up in the Isis, perhaps they fell from a barge on their way to the Ashmolean?
As with all my blogs and the sell-my-antiques website I hold the copyright.Please feel free to email me for permission to reproduce in whole or part.cashwaiting@sell-my-antiques.co.uk