Jeffery,

One more factor in the equation has already begun to assert its effect, as these trading commodities deteriorate physically, irrespective of all marketing evaluations. Many of them were slapped together with impermanent materials and terrible technique, from an archival perspective, and the time bomb is ticking on the ones that have not yet fallen apart.

Conservators will have a field day trying to figure out how to save these modern "masterpieces" as the newspaper that was glued onto the canvas crumbles to dust, oil paint applied over acrylic peels off and falls on the floor (this has already happened), automobile and house paint deteriorates, etc., etc. I suppose it will make a good tax write-off for the person who owns one of these investments when it returns to dust. Of course these things are not terribly difficult to counterfeit, and that opens up a whole other box of troubles for the people who care about these things to think about.

Virgil