My Trip to Tel Aviv - Beach finds 2000 year old coin and over 8 grams of gold!

[Skippy SH13]

EDIT: No longer maintaining post

 

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[Johnnybravo300]

This read has been fascinating and so much energy. The finds were truly amazing and most here will never be that lucky. I bet there's plenty of guys here that would gladly tell Israel to piss off for that coin, starting with me!
Just to help clear your conscience and all that....
If you really want to mail it, ill take it to the post office for you. We do have options here...

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

I'm actually curious if they'll respond with an actual address for it to be sent to. If they never do, I'll never send it in....

Huh ? no no no .... it's your duty to doggedly pursue them for the address. Tsk tsk. You simply can NOT be floating around for the rest of your life, out of compliance with that law Skippy. (how could you sleep at night?). haha

You say you "don't think they cared" (and I agree, d/t such laws are probably geared towards those raiding the pyramids, etc...). But if you were to ask a purist archie there: "Do you care?", of COURSE his canned answer will be "yes". Yet in reality, they have bigger fish to fry.

The friend of our family, who came back with 3 or 4 coins, dating to the time of Christ, had bought them for a few dollars each, from an outdoor market vendor's table. But that was 25+ yrs. ago. I'm sure, as you say, they're probably $10 or whatever now He said he asked the man at the table : "Where did you get these?" The man answered that "when it rains hard, they can be found in a certain gully wash off over at such & such (pointing to a direction in the hills). There is SO much history there, that I bet this story isn't inconceivable.

And no, I don't think my friend got any "export" papers. Probably just threw them in with his luggage. And I highly doubt anyone at the airport riffles through your underwear in your suitcase looking for the dates on loose change. They're probably more concerned with weapons, drug smuggling, etc.


Not saying to "throw caution to the wind" and "flaunt authority in front of a purist archie" though. Of course

 

[Tom_in_CA]

.... I'm actually thinking about asking them if it would be ok if I just put the coin back, next time I go back, "to preserve the historical context"... just to see how they react. HA! That's the evil side of me. ....

I work in a few museum (volunteer docent) and as such, attend and rub shoulders with archies frequently.

Their answer to what you are musing, would be shear terror. It would be like asking them "can I sleep with your wife?". Because even though you might *think* you've put it back at the same depth, yet .... they can muse that the objects around it are now disturbed. Ie.: a fleck of charcoal that was over the top of it (indicating it's below the pit that a fire pit had been), the exact tilt in the ground it had, the proximety to a bird foot bone , indicating the possible diet that the person who lost it was eating. Etc.. Etc...

I know you were probably just joking, and yes, it would probably put you in compliance with the law now, but .... a purist archie won't buy it

 

[Tom_in_CA]

skippy, Merry Christmas to you too bud ! You bring great conversation & opinions for all of md'r buffs here too.

And yeah, sometimes the less the purist archies think of md'rs, the better

 

[patiodadio]

Very interesting reading, thanks for posting. I would love to visit the Holy Land some day.
Now, if it were me, I would buy one of those cheap "old" coins that the venders sell in the market and send them that one. I bet that would be the end of it. Just my 2 cents so to speak

 

[cudamark]

If this has all been done by e-mail so far, you may want to tell them......"look, let's be practical about this. I'll send you all the photos you want to determine if it's something museum worthy. No point in sending this item back and forth around the world if it isn't". Maybe they can evaluate it that way and save all the hassle.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

This "send it to us" type verbiage reminds me of the following:

When T'net was young (mid 1990s), there was only a single page, if I recall. So you had to scroll down the list of titles, to see if anything interested you to read. One thread title was to the effect of "California state beach legal ?". So.... being from CA, I opened that thread. Some dude was coming to so. CA on a business trip, and would be staying in a hotel "... next to such & such state beach". So he was wondering "is it legal/allowed?". As I read his question, my eyes focussed on the part about it being a "...state.." beach (as opposed to city, county, federal, etc...). And I thought about it for a moment, and realized that probably 90% of our coastline here in CA is administered by the state. That has the parking lots, restrooms, picnic tables, etc....

And I mentally pictured all the beaches in my part of CA, and knew they were all "state" beaches that we hunt . So I got ready to type out the answer to the guy that state beaches here are fair game. But before I typed out the "yes" answer, I saw that someone else had already answered his post. So I clicked on their answer first.

What I read was a real eye-opener to this "don't ask silly questions" attitude I now have: The other reply came from a person who made it simple. They merely gave the answer straight from the book called "Treasure Laws of the United States", by R. W. Doc Grim. That book was a sort of fore-runner to what the FMDAC now has on their website, of the state-by-state list. The author merely sent a xeroxed letter to all 50 states park's dept. headquarters. The letter asked "what are your laws regarding the use of metal detectors in your state's parks?" And perhaps detailed how the answers were to be compiled in a book he was writing. When the author got all 50 replies back, he merely puts them all in alphabetic state order, for this book. Even to the extent of being on state letterhead , so if any busy-bodies question you, you can show them straight from the horse's mouth.

A genius idea, right ? Then a person travelling state to state in RVs, can have this handy reference book to remove all doubt (avoid off-limits places, and have a ball where it's ok to do).

And the person posting this page of CA's reply, was figuring it applied to the OP's question. Since, of course, it's the very same park's dept that administers their beaches, as administers the inland parks. That is: There's no reasons why the rules of each wouldn't be the same.

And the answer shocked me, because it was very ... uh ... "dire" sounding. Like if you find an old coin (50 yr. or more?) you were to flag the spot with a little marker flag, and go alert the state archaeologist. Huh ?? This was news to me !! We'd been hunting state of CA beaches for 30 yrs. by then, and (gasp) yes we find old coins (like after storm erosion). And I had never heard of ANYONE hearing so much as "boo" for this. Oh sure, you might get flack if you were at one of the inland historically themed sensitive monument parks, but .... the beach for pete's sake ?

The reason I bring this all up is: How does one know, if and when they dutifully research the laws of where they're going, that the same psychology isn't at play ? I don't doubt you found that answer (that you must send in your old coin). But might it be no different than the situation I spell out here ? Mind you, if anyone here goes to state capitol in Sacramento and asks "does this apply to the beach?" and "does anyone *really* care?".... well of COURSE he will shriek as if you'd just asked to sleep with his wife. But as you can see, the reality is quite different. And if that same archie who just shrieked started getting requests to travel hither and yonder investigating little golf-T flags, or having envelopes arrive on his desk with 1950's wheaties, well .... guess what he'll recommend at the next annual meeting to devise new laws/rules ?

 

[BigWaveDave]

Oh vey!....that's an old coin!

 

[FinderMan]

Really neat find! One correction - the Jewish Revolt of that time was not when the Jews took over Jerusalem. The Jews were fighting to regain sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the occupying Romans. The Jews were largely still living in the land, but it was being governed by Rome at the time. The Jews lost that war, triggering a long and bitter Jewish exile from their ancestral biblical homeland to be spread throughout the world. However, the Jews had been living in Jerusalem for about 1,000 years already by the time of this war. King David had taken the city originally, and the Jews had sovereignty and their own kingdom in the Holy Land for centuries before Roman rule.

 

[SeabeeRon]

Great history lesson Skippy!! Thanks!!

 

[Cannonfury]

Nice, I do love middle eastern coins