On the death of Anton “Toni” Tkalec (1948-2026)
Let’s be clear: people like Toni Tkalec are responsible for the debate on cultural property protection becoming so emotionally charged. People like him took advantage of the widely non-existent legal regulations governing international trade in coins and antique art objects at the time. They adhered to the letter of the law, but lived according to a moral code that is now outdated. For them, a state not only had the right to its cultural treasures, but also the duty to protect them. They did not see it as their problem that the Mediterranean countries of the 1980s and 1990s did not do so. On the contrary, they were happy about every coin that left its country of origin. Among collectors, it was safe from being melted down and was available for free research.
Whether this worldview is reprehensible or understandable is something everyone must decide for themselves today.
An origin with many question marks
We don’t know much about Toni Tkalec’s origins and youth. He was born on February 29, 1948, in Belgrade. His parents? Well, he himself said that his mother was a gifted opera singer and his father an engineer. Or did his mother finance his engineering studies? He told different versions of his origins, but emphasized that he had specialized in ancient coins as early as the late 1950s (at the age of just 10 years!). Which version is true is probably not even important. Toni would have enjoyed the confusion. He was a gifted storyteller who liked to mystify his own life.
As a small coin dealer in Vienna
Things became more real in the late 1970s. In 1977, Toni Tkalec was registered in Vienna. However, that does not mean that he did not live there before. From that year onwards, the Austrian government simply required all foreigners to register—including Toni.
At that time, in year 19, he was probably working as a small-time pocket dealer. This was the name given by coin dealers to those who made a living by buying coins in one coin shop and selling them at a higher price in another. Toni was also a gifted and wanted coin restorer. Grading did not yet exist, and collectors liked carefully cleaned bronze coins.
Toni later liked to recount how he also traveled to Zurich in his younger years. And every time, he was outraged by how arrogantly the established coin dealers there dismissed him. He would spend his life taking revenge for this treatment by refusing to play by their rules, he, the “little Serb.”
So what was the story with the Seuso treasure?
Sometime between 1977 and 1985, Toni Tkalec made the leap into the premier league of coin trading. It is quite likely that the affair surrounding the Seuso treasure played a decisive role in this. Today, journalists and activists assume that it was Toni Tkalec who bought the impressive silver service from the original smuggler. The problem is that he never appeared as the seller himself. A Lebanese antique dealer named Halim Korban, who owned a shop in Vienna’s posh Hilton Hotel, brought the first pieces to London. There they were on display in the Mansour Gallery near Oxford Circus. Many people at the time must have thought what a good business could be made with these silver plates!
Don’t forget: it was the year 1980, at the height of inflation. The annual inflation rate in the UK was almost 18%. Anyone with cash was wondering how to keep it safe. Savvy speculators sensed big profits and took on debt. They used borrowed money to buy works of art, which they later resold at a large profit. One of them was British peer, politician, and Freemason Spencer Douglas David Compton, 7th Marquess of Northampton (estimated fortune in the year 2011 according to Wikipedia: £120 million).
Peter Wilson, then an institution in the British art market, is said to have persuaded him to buy the first three plates from the Seuso Treasure for the equivalent of £798,000 (equivalent to DM 4.8 million / CHF 4.4 million / USD 1.7 million). To put this sum into perspective: in Munich in the early 1980s, it would have been enough to buy at least 12 terraced houses with approximately 120 square meters of living space in a good location. In September and December 1981, further plates changed hands for £180,000 and £525,000 respectively. In 1987, the last transaction took place, involving four silver plates for a total of USD 8.7 million.
What happened to the Seuso Treasure after that is another story. No fewer than three nations, Lebanon, Croatia, and Hungary, competed for its return. Many journalists and activists attempted to reconstruct the events, without reaching identical conclusions. Some of them accused Toni Tkalec not only of smuggling, but also of quadruple murder. He was never charged. The Zurich police merely questioned him as a witness.
1500 years of coin minting
Whether it was the proceeds from the Seuso treasure or whether Toni Tkalec found another source of funding is something everyone can decide for themselves. The fact is that since 1984, he has established himself as the specialist for the most fine and valuable antique coins in Zurich. Anything that made it into a Tkalec auction was considered the cream of the crop, the most fine thing a collector could acquire. First in collaboration with the Austrian coin dealer Rauch, and then on its own from 1991 onwards, Anton Tkalec AG held auctions in a class of their own, and not just in terms of the quality of the goods.
Toni Tkalec took immense pleasure in impressing others with his wealth. He maintained a huge office on the posh Limmatquai, which stood empty for most of the year. It only came to life when preparations for the auction began. Toni would then welcome his guests, serve them champagne and ham sandwiches, and entertain them with stories from his life while lighting one cigarette after another.
Toni could be infinitely generous, and not only during his legendary auction banquets in the elegant Zunfthaus zum Kämbel. He proved to be a patron, especially to smaller coin dealers with limited budgets. He gave them purchases that were sure to make them money. On the other hand, he loved to snub the established dealers. He enjoyed seeing them drunk. And it could well happen that he would settle down in the posh lobby of the Baur en Ville in a shabby jogging suit – at that time still an absolute no-go – to entertain coin dealers and collectors who were missing from the auction room at his table.
Toni was not a nice person. He enjoyed intimidating men he didn’t like with his physical presence. But those who won his sympathy were treated with care and courtesy. He enjoyed having guests at his villa in Neos Marmaras, Greece, and entertained them until the tables were sheeted with food.
The end of an era
Was it the enactment of the Swiss Cultural Property Protection Act that discouraged Toni Tkalec from holding further auctions in Switzerland? Or was it his ugly divorce that robbed him of a large part of his fortune? Toni also lost a lot of money trying to build a platform to compete with Sixbid, but ultimately lacked the technical expertise to do so. He wasted a huge amount of money on Indian programmers who didn’t really understand what he wanted them to do.
At some point, Toni disappeared from Zurich. When you met him, he said he was living with a new girlfriend in Neos Marmaras. But then he was nowhere to be seen.
Only a few close friends knew that he had moved back to Vienna. A journalist tracked him down there. Yet another person who wanted to find out the truth about the Seuso treasure. She is said to have tried to persuade him to open the door to her in the week of his death. He did not do so. Whatever connected him to the Seuso treasure, we will never know. He took his secret with him to the grave.
By the way: you can see the Seuso Treasure for yourself
In 2014, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán boasted that he had brought seven pieces of the treasure back to Budapest. They were part of an exhibition in the Budapest Parliament until the end of August 2017. Today, a research project is dedicated to evaluating them. The treasure itself can be viewed in the Hungarian National Museum.
Text by Ursula Kampmann
