Seller sues dealer/buyer for a high flip

[Yoda]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Does Moser really exist or is he a boogeyman?

Gary is a zombie and living in your basement.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Gary is a zombie and living in your basement.

But we don't have a basement...

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Eric, I don't expect everyone to agree with me or for people I disagree with not to voice their views. I want to hear those views, but I also want to hear the rationales behind the views. These are difficult subjects and people hold a variety of views.

I have a lot of friends and family tell me that they like talking to me about sensitive topics because I rarely get upset when someone thinks differently than I do. I completely 100% agree that life is rarely black/white like many many people want it to be. Trying to look at life as gray, and deciphering gray scale is what makes it interesting. Almost all of my friends are Republican. Nearly all of my family are Democrats. I find talking to each of them is very rewarding.

Originally Posted by Shemp

Nobody seems to have brought up the biggest issue.....was this mask stolen from Gabon years ago? If so, shouldn't this mask be returned to the rightful owners?

I thought about this. If the item was bought by a private collector, I'm not sure the item will be repatriated. But if a museum bought it, there is a good chance that the provenance behind it would eventually force it to be returned to Gabon. The current ethics of museums is to return items stolen during colonialism. I don't necessarily agree to that every time. Some of the places getting items back are dangerous locations that have seen their museums pillaged within the last decade. To me, it's like returning an abused child to abusive parents. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. But the blanket sweep of "return all colonized stolen items" IMO seems to be mistaken.

[Exhibitman]

Yet another gray area, Tim. There is certainly less freedom of choice on the colonial end, but there is still room for agency. If a local gave the mask as a gift to an outgoing English bureaucrat, that is a lot different than someone busting into a local museum and taking it. Or, to put it into a context much closer to home, a Native American artifact could have been stolen from a site, taken as a prize in war, traded for in peace, or found on the roadside. The closer you get to looted, as in the case of all of the forced art sales that the Nazis did, the less legitimate title is (even that required a new law to give the families of the victims a remedy).

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Yet another gray area, Tim. There is certainly less freedom of choice on the colonial end, but there is still room for agency. If a local gave the mask as a gift to an outgoing English bureaucrat, that is a lot different than someone busting into a local museum and taking it. Or, to put it into a context much closer to home, a Native American artifact could have been stolen from a site, taken as a prize in war, traded for in peace, or found on the roadside. The closer you get to looted, as in the case of all of the forced art sales that the Nazis did, the less legitimate title is (even that required a new law to give the families of the victims a remedy).

You're not wrong. But it makes me think of Native American Reservations. They just kept getting smaller and smaller. Every generation or so, the Feds were moving the goal posts on what Native American support should entail. Some of the land was lost out of legal land sales to white farmers. But the reservation leaders were selling because they needed money. Capitalism and Native Culture often didn't co-exist well...until they discovered Casinos. Anyway, even legal sales or gifts can often be interpreted as theft when the group in power have put those without power between a rock and a hard place.

I took a Native American class last year, and they were teaching us about a wampum belt. It had been given to the white government at the time, and eventually made its way to a museum. After a court battle that it was not meant to be on display, it was repatriated to the local tribe. It has rarely been seen again. I think this happened in the late 1970s. This example is an extreme example of gray. It was the intersection of legality, ethics, and culture.