Making Money from Antiquities - at What Cost?

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David Gill has a timely piece reminding us that "attitudes towards selling and collecting antiquities were very different in 1990", just two decades ago. This has significant repercussions for the market today and causes one to cast a suspicious eye on collecting histories which - even in the case of highly significant ("art") objects - cannot be traced much further back beyond the previous owner. Read his piece "Looking Back to Athena Fund II" and Bruce McNall's (2003) autobiography "Fun while it lasted" (available from Amazon for a reasonable price). (Really) "Smart money" would probably prefer something else in preference to something that emerged on this sector of the market. That is probably why dealers and collectors with one or more of the very many "pieces" which surfaced there and then would probably prefer to keep it quiet rather than honestly reveal the actual history of the items they are now trying to flog off.

Vignette: Athena and her pot (red figure vase)