Turkey's police force has smashed two separate antique-smuggling operations in Istanbul, reported the Turkish Daily News on Saturday.
It said that four people had been detained and a total of 472 antiques had been seized.
Most of the artifacts seized in one raid date back to Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine times, but there was also one fossilized starfish said to be several million years old.
Another police sting operation against three people trying to sell antiques resulted in 10 amphoras from the Roman era being seized. The men had tried to sell each piece for $1,000, said the paper - ALbawaba.com
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