WorldNetDaily still has to beg for money. The cryptocurrency thing isn’t quite working out, at least in the short term (at last check, the AML Bitcoin WND is giving away to those who donate is hovering around 12 cents). The publishing of WND editor Joseph Farah’s new Bible book is not going well. How else can WND entice a little support from its readers?
How about some ancient coins? A Dec. 11 article tries to set the selling mood:
Elizabeth Farah, the cofounder and chief operating officer of WND, walked down a quiet lane in the capital city west of the old green line separating Arab East Jerusalem and the Israeli side of town.
Music was in the air courtesy of the music conservatory across the street from a three-story, 19th century Oriental house. She knocked on the door and was greeted by a legendary figure in the antiquities business – Lenny Wolfe.
The native of Glasgow, Scotland, greeted her with a brogue-tinged accent, which Hebrew speakers say carries over to that tongue as well.
He showed her around.
She had been in search of treasures and she had found them. The house was full of them – everywhere you looked. Clay lamps from the First Century that still work with a little olive oil. Ancient jars. Magnificent 2,500-year-old pitchers and bowls. Priceless antiquities lined the walls, covered the floors, and trimmed the tables.
Wolfe eagerly handed her treasure after treasure – many costing a small fortune. While Farah handled them gingerly, Wolfe seemed gleeful and carefree about showing off his discoveries.
But what caught Farah’s eye were the coins – piles of them, most from the First Century or earlier.
Long story short: Farah bought a bunch of thse coins — mites, “the kind of coins the poor widow in Mark 12:41-44 deposited in the treasury of the synagogue” — allegedly dating from 135 B.C. to 29 A.D., “so she could make them available as Christmas and Hanukkah gifts in the WND Superstore.”
The coins are available in various settings from as low as $49.99 to as much as $300; each comes with “a certificate of authenticity signed by the distinguished Israeli antiquities dealer Lenny Wolfe, and are individually wrapped in a velvet pouch and gift box.”
But it seems at the setting is more valuable than the coin itself; highly worn coins aren’t worth very much — $6 by one estimate — even if they are authentically a couple millennia old. WND presumably got these coins at a price good enough to make money through reselling them.
But remember that WND remains on shaky ground financially and is doing what it can to stay alive, and this is just one more effort toward that end.