I don't personally collect, but as a (former?) archaeologist I have both some familiarity with the subject and a pretty strong distaste for looting. Provenance

I don't personally collect, but as a (former?) archaeologist I have both some familiarity with the subject and a pretty strong distaste for looting. Provenance is just plain necessary for any sort of good academic work on historical artifacts. Only time I've directly purchased coinage was for the purposes of melting down into a ring for my now-wife, and that had provenance paperwork just to ensure I wasn't enriching modern looters.