Avoiding "entrapment" with Classical Antiquities

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Kimberly Alderman has some correspondence with New York-based antiquities lawyer, William Pearlstein about the upcoming Christies' Medici-item auctions. Pearlstein thinks that despite the fact that they are crucial evidence in investigations that are still ongoing, Italy should be required to compromise those investigations by publishing the so-called Medici archives "so that US market participants could protect themselves, police the market and diligence their purchases…". Collectors' rights" lobbyist Wayne Sayles agrees and adds:

I find it outrageous that David Gill purportedly has access to some or all of the Medici photos when those who are at risk of buying the objects cannot avoid entanglement. I’m not a lawyer, but to me this has essentially the same effect as entrapment

I wonder how Mr Sayles would feel if a government seized all his business records ("the Sayles Archives") going back several decades and published them for everyone to see? This seems like a good idea and I for one would love to see them. I could go through them with a really fine toothcomb, as I am sure would many people who have bought stuff from Sayles and Lavender or who are contemplating investing in any of the coins they offer which have no provenance stated up-front.

So, in the absence of such transparency by dealers, either voluntary or enforced, how to avoid entrapment?

Well, I suppose basically not to rely on negative evidence ("no record of this being stolen" means there is no record, not that an object is not stolen or otherwise illicitly obtained). A pervy buyer might be tempted by mutilated statues of naked youths holding a cock, which has "surfaced" (from underground?) on the market just a couple of decades ago. But what if none of the "responsible" buyers and sellers have thought to attach any kind of documentation to the sale revealing where it was previously? That at once should make the object 'tainted' in the eyes of a responsible buyer. The object has passed through the hands of those less responsible, who did not care to know where the object was previously. The proper "diligincing" (to use pearlstein's term, is there really such a word in English?) of the object is impossible.

The only possible reason therefore a collector would want to acquire the piece is that he (or she) lusts for it and is willing to deceive themselves that the fact there is no documentation is not at all suspicious ("after all this is traditional in this trade") and that anyway they personally are such cosmopolitan enlightened consumers that they are somehow "deserving" of such an item. After all, as their "collectors' rights" advocates keep pointing out, those restrictive laws about protecting the archaeological heritage are as recently stated on the yahoo "AncientArtifacts" collectors' forum just foolish, impractical, abstract principles, utopian concepts advanced by irresponsible idealists and an unreasonable affront to personal liberty. These are the people trapped, trapped by their own avarice.

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