Quote:
Originally Posted by David
As for the old couple who weren't savvy enough to get the big bucks for it, while i certainly believe you got ripped off by your local antique dealer, you weren't supposed to have this mask in the first place anyway. The question of returning cultural items to their sources is always a touchy one, especially when discussed in collector circles. But a ritual mask for a secret society of the Fang people is a deeply sacred object, not your ordinary artifact. This is probably one that should be returned.
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That issue aside (and I agree that it is a significant issue), I'm not sure what case they have and I feel conflicted about the ethics of the situation... So someone who has invested much time and effort to understand the value of an item has made a huge profit on it when you did not spend that time and effort and considered it useless. Well, frankly, tough.
As a collector with limited funds who has never sold anything (yet), I don't like the excessive greed that is very clearly rampant in the antiques world at all. It sucks, but that's capitalism for you. Profit is king. Of course, it would've been to the dealer's credit had he offered them a fair price, but given the incentives how many dealers actually would? Not many I suspect. You can't very well expect a dealer to just offer you millions for it out of the goodness of their heart when you're asking for €150, on the off chance that it does
this well at an auction. In the end, they paid what you asked for, didn't they? If you want a good price for your item, that requires doing your due diligence. Recognizing a bargain and selling it at a high markup is what they do for a living.
Personally I would like the incentives to be very different, but for the moment that is the reality of the world we've made for ourselves.
EDIT: Just to give a recent example from my own life (which may or may not sound self serving, but it colors the way I feel about this issue): I often hunt for bargains on ebay derivatives because of my limited funds. I try to be well informed enough to recognize somewhat rare things that may be of interest. If I see something that looks vaguely familiar at a good price, I pick it up. I have never sold anything so I haven't profited from this, I just want to enjoy the feeling of collecting and discovery, and making a good deal is nice. More often than not, though, I get burned (the "oops box" overfloweth), but occasionally I find something interesting. I bought
these swords a little while ago. They have a bit of a touristy vibe to them with the animal motifs, thin blades, and the lack of extensive patina, so I was unsure that they were real items until a while after I bought them, but I have a few books on African arms and I read a lot of old threads here, so I had vague recollections of seeing something similar and suspected they were of interest. So I picked them up for the asking price, which was very little. Then I found a similar sword listed (unsold) at an ethnographic arms site for a lot more money than I would have been willing to pay at the time (although personally I doubt it will sell at the listed price, but hey the dealers probably know more than I do). Great for me, but it kind of implies I screwed the lady who sold them to me. Should I have told her to ask for more because I had an inkling? Should I have gone back to her and offered her a huge markup after I found out they're probably worth more (and how much more)? Maybe, but then I couldn't have afforded them, so I'd always be screwing myself. And given how often I've been on the receiving end of that dynamic, it kind of feels like "you win some, you lose lots". There are no doubt better people out there than I am, who would do so out of principle, but I don't think it's something you can just expect.
Of course, the scale is not quite comparable, and maybe this guy did something more nefarious than I'm picking up from these quotes.