Recent Pleasant Experience with Indian Customs' Department

[Bimat]

I recently had a very pleasantly surprising experience with Indian customs' department.

I had bought three Austrian coins from a Germany based dealer, one of which was bit expensive (Silver-Niobium €25), one €5 silver and one €5 copper. Total value of the three coins was close to €100, and the same was declared by the seller in the invoice which was enclosed inside the letter and also on the custom declaration form.

When the letter reached India, it went for customs' inspection as usual. This step does not worry me as it's a routine thing. When it was not released from them even after 4 days, I had little bit of uncomfortable feeling as it was clear that it was most probably being held by them. As expected, on day 5, I saw a status update (on India Post tracking website) saying it's being held for assessment by customs' officer. I was bit worried now as they would have charged almost 100% customs duty as per my previous experience (they have a very confusing way of calculating customs duty on coins, which so far I have not been able to understand.)

About four days later, I received the letter at my address, and guess what - they had not charged me any customs duty! The letter was indeed opened for inspection as I could see their closing seal, they had added an assessment form inside, where the officer calculated the "true value" of the contents, and then ticked on the "Accepted as a gift" option and released it without any duty!

This is particularly very satisfying for me as I recently paid about €15 duty on a €20 copper coin, which I had bought for €25 or so...

Aditya

[THCoins]

Lucky you ! With Indian export rules it is difficult to get coins from India legally. I had only one confrontation with Indian customs. After they had verified that the medieval coins sent to me actually did not originate from India i was sent a very polite note and the coins were released promptly.
Netherlands customs at the moment is more difficult. I was sent some Indian coins from the US 6 weeks ago. These are now held up for 5 weeks in customs here. After they requested my explanation of the contents they did not accept my standard reply which usually is sufficient (contents: collectors coins, no precious metal, not legal tender, not subject to any import or export limitation). I had to pay 60 euros customs fee and taxes and give a detailed explanation. A month later, i am still waiting.

[quaziright]

Lucky you ! With Indian export rules it is difficult to get coins from India legally. I had only one confrontation with Indian customs. After they had verified that the medieval coins sent to me actually did not originate from India i was sent a very polite note and the coins were released promptly.

I guess im a little confused by the semantics here. My assumption is you are outside india and were receiving medieval coins from india which were stopped by Indian customs but then were released to you because they did not originate from India.

Were these not Medieval Indian coinage? And if not, then were these European or Chinese medieval coinage? And if so, that's very interesting because while it's common to find asian medieval coinage in Europe/America for a variety of reasons, it's not common to hear it the other way round I suppose

[THCoins]

I tried to summarize the matter a bit. These were actually central asian coins that a fellow Indian collector had received from a collector in Thailand and gifted to me in the Netherlands. All with documentation. I think the customs officer could have been strict, but realized that this was not an attempt to evade Indian antiquity rules.
That said, i would love to have a Roman coin found in India !

[quaziright]

I could imagine a Greek coin minted maybe in the Greek peninsula brought with Alexander's armies into today's northwestern India. Technically we could say such a coin unearthed in what is today Indian/Pakistani soil originated from outside the national borders!