By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff

The U.S. Mint’s recent campaign to impound the Ron Paul Liberty Dollar as an unlawful impingement on the circulation of American currency may be garnering all the coin-related headlines. But serious coin collectors are monitoring a far lower-profile numismatic flap. Three coin-collecting associations — the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, the International Association of ProfessionalNumismatists and the Professional Numismatists Guild — filed suit earlier this month against the State Department to protest its move in July to restrict imports of ancient coins from the island nation of Cyprus.

The suit, now pending in federal court in Washington, invokes the Freedom of Information Act in an effort to compel State to disclose the documentary record of the decision.

The department is empowered to make these calls under a 1983 law cracking down on the illegal trade in culturally significant objects. This summer’s decision was the law’s first application to coin imports. Previously, State had bowed to collectors’ arguments that coins don’t fit the law’s precepts, but a growing number of archeologists and foreign governments — Cyprus among them — have pushed to use the law to restrict the international traffic in all cultural treasures, no matter how mundane their original use.

State officials decided in July that buyers of Cypriot coins must produce documents showing their legal provenance. If the coin purchasers fail to meet that standard, incoming coins are repatriated to Cyprus.

In addition to erecting an artificial trade barrier with the provenance demand, the ruling unfairly singles out collectors as potential bad actors, the plaintiffs say. “It switches the burden of proof from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt,” says Wayne G. Sayles, executive director of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild.

State Department spokesman Josue M. Barrera declined comment on the basis of the still-pending litigation. Sayles’ group, which alleges that State has long been unresponsive to its concerns, has previously enlisted two senators, Republican Christopher S. Bond of Missouri and Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York, as well as GOP Rep. John Culberson of Texas, to make entreaties in its behalf. Meanwhile, he says the group hopes the suit will beat back “a precedent that can be devastatingto a hobby like coin collecting that is dependent on world trade.”