O
n January 30, 2007, the dealers' lobby group the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild awarded Senator "Do What Torturing You have To Do" Chuck Schumer (Democrats -New York) its Friend of Numismatics Award. Senator Schumer was involved in the questioning of the bilateral cultural property agreement with China on the grounds that coineys suspected there "may have been irregularities in how the State Department processed a Peoples Republic of China (sic) request involving a wide variety of cultural artifacts dating from Neolithic times to AD 1911". Senator Schumer and Jeff Hamond of his staff hosted a meeting where the concerns of New Yorkers, including collectors and the small businesses of the numismatic trade, were raised directly with a high ranking State Department official.Schumer and now Gillibrand (Democrats -New York). In receiving this award, Senator Schumer joined Senator Kit Bond of Missouri and Congressmen Green, Petri and Ryan from Wisconsin and others in accepting this token of appreciation from the ancient coin collecting community for their help and support for the no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities.
Of course supporting US dealers selling dugups no-questions-asked is not a problem for Senator Schumer, he'll lend his name to that, no problems there about American people stealing the archaeological heritage from the brown-skinned guys abroad. He has no problems therefore with US collectors putting money into the pockets of culture criminals and organized criminal groups involved in antiquity smuggling to the US. But modern commemorative coins, now THERE is a problem worthy of his attention, there's something to fight for. Gotta stop collectors putting money into the pockets of small US businesses producing commemorative coins and medals. Obvious.