private sales of fossils & artifacts

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What are your opinions of sales of fossils and artifacts like arrowheads to private individuals?

Some bigger artifacts I think should be for museums and maybe have replicas made. I just think if something was used as importantly so many hundreds or thousands of years ago, it doesn't deserve to be getting dusty on someone's mantle or shelf.

fossils on the other hand; I think that could be real art. Find a fossilized fern or something imprinted in some sandstone. I don't like furniture or tables made out of them though.

There is plenty to go around for everyone If the fossils or artifacts are human remains, then I would give them the respect of being left alone. Otherwise, nobody should have a monopoly on them.

if there was no private demand the quantity of artifacts and fossils that would be found would drop (people wouldn't bother / couldn't afford to look for them). So i think it's fine that they sell them privately as long as the museums or specialists get to take a look/ give tips for conservation.

Creating a fossil is a rare geological event and there are many blank spaces in the evolutionary story which is a world treasure for understanding the history of life. Admittedly there are fossils which are not crucial but scientists should always have the privilege of passing on whether a fossil should be held by an institution involved in the history of life or whether it has minimum importance to research and can be held privately.

I love archeology and think the artifacts should be for everyone to enjoy, there has been cases of private collectors years later donating their collections to museums and I think that is very kwel. Fossils on the other hand are fascinating and many are locked away as the finds have been too vast to display them all. So I guess, for the less significant ones at any rate, it would be okay to collect. Where I grew up as a child we use to find fossils, as the land had once been part of a river or inland sea. I remember two of them my brother found were shown to an adult who promptly fed him some BS and stole them.

My father has a lovely one near his BBQ area of a large fish, it's was in one of the boulders he used to make the retaining wall that surrounds the area, it looks awesome and is a little scary with all the teeth. I wish I had of kept some of the ones I found but it just never seemed right to me and I always put them back after I had studied them for a while.

When you exume these "artifacts" from their natural context, they lose their validity. If you want to know more about it, PM me.