On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 15:34:36 -0500, Reid Goldsborough
wrote:

What follows is a distillation of many people's opinions and
observations, including my own. Additions and corrections are

This is in response to further nonsense from Phil DeMayo about this
subject, gleaned from Google Groups.

Phil DeMayo isn't a lawyer but plays one on the Internet, doing things
no lawyer would ever do, combining various unrelated statutes and
nonbinding court cases and pronouncing definitively, over and over,
what's legal and what's not when there's anything but judicial clarity
about the subject of ownership of counterfeits of collectible coins.

He has said that Armen Vartian, the most visible numismatic legal
expert in the country, a lawyer who writes a legal column for Coin
World, has recently written a particular column about the legalities
of collecting counterfeit coins, and has written a book about
collectibles and the law, must not have read the counterfeit statutes
because his interpretation differs from Phil's.

Phil has said that you don't need to interpret laws, just read them.
From his reading of the law, sans interpretation and context, he has
warned people repeatedly about the dire legal consequence they face if
they collect counterfeit coins, including jail, fines, and car
confiscated, when none of these consequences have ever taken place.

He is legalistic in the extreme, contending that all laws and all
rules should be followed to the letter, yet hypocritically refusing to
answer the simple question of whether he himself has broken the law by
driving faster than the speed limit, in response only calling others
hypocritical.

He is moralistic in the extreme, impugning the ethics of those who
collect or study or write about counterfeits yet whose ethics online
leave a great deal to be desired, not to mention his maturity,
exemplified by among other things his taking a picture of me from my
Web site, defacing it, then putting it on his Web site.

He doesn't understand the difference between jurisprudence and ethics,
simplemindedly equating the two, and between counterfeits and
replicas, simplemindedly equating the two.

His sole or at least primary source of "research" is Google, and he
appears to believe whatever he finds, particularly if it comes from an
"official" source such as a government Web site.

His purpose in putting out information isn't to disseminate truth but
to support his own entrenched ideas, to promote his agenda. He is
rabidly anti-counterfeit, yet he repeatedly puts out counterfeit
information -- phony and fake -- about this subject.

He has said flat-out that he doesn't make mistakes, and his online
debating style reflects this -- sheer stuck-in-the-mud,
never-budge-an-inch intransigence. When it becomes clear that he's
wrong about a point, he has repeatedly blurted out "Bite me!" rather
than saying, level-headedly, "I hadn't considered that," or "That's
something I didn't know," or "I need to check more into this," or "You
may be right."

--

Email: (delete "remove this")

Coin Collecting: Consumer Protection Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos