Brown Boxing and the Antiquities Trade

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I was curious to know why the tarantula smuggler article here was so popular, every week, several people from the most widely-scattered parts of the world look at it. I assumed a popular arachnophile forum might have a link to it. I was curious where it might be and began to look through these forums and in the process had a peek at what people who keep these animals write about. I found that there is a name for the sending of invertebrates through the post without fulfilling the legal export and import formalities. They call it brown boxing - the sending of declarable items in anonymous unmarked (or misleadingly marked) packages so as not to attract attention. I found this on Todd Gearheart's "Tarantulaspiders.com, "The Cutting Edge of Arachnoculture" website, in the "Legal - news, laws and regulations you need to know about section:

"BROWN-BOXING":

This is an illegal activity when a U.S. buyer purchases from a foreign seller wildlife and has the shipment received in the postal mail without declaring the contents to U.S. customs and U.S. Fish & Wildlife. People do this to get around not having to pay expensive, but legally required import costs,and/or to acquire illegal species and/or to gain an advantage in the commercial market by not having import cost overhead.

A telling difference between the invertebrate buying and antiquity buying milieus is the last sentence:

It hurts our hobby and trade. Do NOT buy from people that do this.

Arachnophile Xenesthis (who it turns out is Todd Gearheart too) offers the following pointers for recognising "Brown Boxing Sellers"

Brown-boxing "red flags"

•*A seller posts an ad on for a rare species that has sold for a high price by a majority of other sellers a price with a price 50% less or more than their competitors. A "too good to be true" price.
• Seller does not have an import permit (or technically did not have a permit until recently
• Seller does not buy from other known suppliers with import permits
•*Seller's price list consistently undercuts their competition and sells stock so low, you have to question how did they get the stock and put up such a low price.
•*Seller's customers tend to be "newbies", very young, who go for price first purchases and never think about these red flags.

Now, anybody in the know, do some research and triangulate and figure in a process of elimination and you know who these brown-boxing sellers are, don't you? Brown-boxing hurts the hobby - period. Don't buy from sellers engaged in this practice. It hurts breeders, investors, legal importers and brings gov. attention to our hobby. Regulate ourselves. Don't buy from brown-boxing sellers.

I wonder how long it will be until dugup antiquity collectors define some red flags indicating brown boxing in their hobby? Or don't they really care about brown boxing?
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Vignette: Mexican Red Knee spider ; box logo: Todd Gearheart