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ANTIQUES, ART, AND UNEMPLOYMENT
THE CHINA CONNECTION

WOULD YOU SPEND SEVERAL MILLION DOLLARS TO BUY 299 ONE DOLLAR BILLS?

Well someone did just that at Sothebys several days ago.  Andy Warhols' 200 One Dollar Bills went for a few million dollars. Not bad for a silk screen.
The New York Times confirmed last Friday, what I had reported to you two weeks ago. Auction houses are reporting lower sold and therefor more unsold items. At their American Paintings sale, name artists of new-to-market paintings are showing strong prices.

With President Obama in China, I have an interesting story to tell about my experience with the Chinese Government and the U.S. State Department:

About 12 years ago, while on a trip to Hong Kong, I decided to spend the afternoon strolling through one of the many alleyways, on the Kowloon Side of H.K. I stumbled upon a small shop selling fossils: dinosaur eggs, ammonites, fossilized fish, stingrays, etc.   Frankly, outside of a museum and magazines, I had never seen dinosaur eggs and ammonites. This story is about the ammonite which I purchased along with several other items, having them shipped to my home address in N.Y.
 Dinosauer eggs

The items were paid for. When I left H.K. and boarded the plane back to N.Y., I filled out the customs declarations clearly indicating that chinese fossils were being shipped separately. Several weeks after returning to N.Y., I received a letter from U.S. customs advising me the shipment was being held up in customs in San Francisco, because the airwaybill of lading showing the cargo to be "toys" and not fossils, with an accusatory tone of "smuggling " chinese national treasures.  
 
U.S. Customs referred the case to the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. When the Chinese Embassy heard about the fossils, they wanted the shipment returned to China, because they claimed these were "national treasures".  Never mind that Bloomingdales in New York were selling chinese fossils;
they wanted the good returned sight unseen.

I wrote a series of letters to the State Department in Washington, and a series of letters were written back to me. By providing copies of my invoices by the seller, receipts by the seller showing tat they purchased these goods from an OFFICIAL CHINESE GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY in Hunan province from whom they purchased the goods, and with a copy of my original customs form showing that I had certified I would be bring chinese fossils into the U.S., I had appeared to convince our authorities that this was a bonafide transaction, adding that the Chinese government had never even seen these goods, but they wanted it back, anyway.  
 
I was getting a little nasty with my tone, and then wrote a letter under the Freedom of Information Act, asking for the letters and all communications between our U.S. State Department and the Chinese Embassy in D.C.; I received many, convincing me that our State Department was trying to resolve this issue.  After almost 18 months, the State Department wrote a letter to the Chinese Embassy advising them that inasmuch as they, the Embassy representing the Peoples Republic of China, had failed to prove to them that the legal ownership was the government of China, and that I had legal title to the goods. The goods were finally released to me, after 20 months, but only after I paid storage charges
to U.S. customs in S.F., where my fossils were held, in a private storage area.

What is the moral of  the story? I do not know.......but I would suggest you keep all of your receipts, be honest with U.S. Customs, declaring everything when entering the U.S., and if their is a story on what you are buying, get it in writing.

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