Investing in the singular makes the pieces not so unique

While the media continues to chat about (seemingly) astonishing prices fetched at fossils auctions, and while I certainly have thoughts about the most recent auction (here), today I’m thinking about something else. Today I’m thinking about fractionally owning fossils, so fossils purely as investment.

The spectre of {{insert precious and rare thing}} as transformed from something magical to something debased through commodification is a common trope. It is a story-line of loss that I, too, often feel beneath the rather transparent sheet of “academic objectivity” that I don’t believe that I project. The idea that markets sully the sacred is common, while in parallel classic texts on the topic of singularity and uniqueness see infrequent market appearance as almost being a confirmation of singularity (I’m looking at you Kopytoff). So we don’t know if something is singular and unique until it is sucked into the commercial sphere for at least a moment, providing it with a monetary value and/or a combination of public desire and disgust. Should we really be selling this? Doesn’t it belong in a museum? Just what is shared heritage anyway if it can be sold to the highest bidder? Etc.

The “Right” Kind of Buyer

Still within this repeating narrative, we can still imagine that, at least, the buyer on the other end loves this precious thing. There is an impression of a “right kind of collector” who buys the art, artefact, dinosaur, or whatever, loves it for their lifetime, then passes it on for others to love. Becker, in his 1982 Art Worlds, called these people “serious”, saying that they have “the ability to respond emotionally and cognitively to the manipulation of standard elements in the vocabulary of the medium”.

In this scenario the imagined ideal is that the buyer will eventually donate the object to a museum, capturing the heritage for the public once and for all, and in a way where the museum didn’t have to pay anything for it. You will see the idea, that these objects all eventually go to a museum, repeated again and again in quotes justifying the commodification art, artefacts, or fossils. I can’t offer you stats on if this narrative has any truth because no one can. These statements are not the product of any research or analysed data, they are the product of desire. Sure some of these objects end up donated to some museum somewhere, but this story-line exists because many need to believe in it. It helps cleanse the commodification of the special things to know that one day they will be safe again. They had their time in the market-space, proving their singularity, and will finally exit to a museum.

The “Wrong” Kind of Buyer

So that leaves us with the “wrong kind of buyer”, the “in it for the money” buyer The speculator. The investor.

Art market literature is awash with criticism of the idea of people who see art as an investment and have no love of the art itself. The market, media, and academia are critical and suspicious of people who appear to wish to profit from the acquisition of artworks without loving art in the way that art is “supposed” to be loved. Dealers talk about excluding these people from the market in various ways (while no doubt still selling to them), they are seen as highly susceptible to fraud, and are portrayed as an extreme of commodification debasement. Still, these people are in the market, most dealers (including those who say otherwise) will of course transact with them, and arguably the investment buyers are why art market prices are so wacky. Plus maybe they love the art in their own way (“we” secretly hope). Who knows what they do when they take their painting home. The possession aspect still gives some space for the singular and unique thing to do its magic on a person.

Fractional Fossil Investment

Which brings me, finally, to what I want to talk about. Fractional investment. The idea of buying a share in an artwork or other special thing, in this case fossils, speculatively with the understanding that the collectively owned item will increase in value and the investors will get a pay out when it is sold. In this scenario the shareholders likely never see (or touch) the item in question, there’s no human-object connection. The share is just part of a portfolio, likely on a alternative investing website/application, and that is that. There is probably some small thrill to paying a small amount to own a fraction of a distant dinosaur, but the thrill must quickly fade with no physicality to support it.

I’ve been intrigued by the idea of fractional fossils since I saw a Megalodon Tooth available for fractional investment on the platform Timeless (here).

As of my typing on 21 Jul 2025, Timeless claims that the drop value of the tooth was 5,500 Euro and the current market value is 7,500 Euro. The problem with this is that the tooth in question, objectively and obviously, is neither worth 5,000 nor 7,500 Euro, and I know this to be true. You can know this to be true too in less than a minute. There are thousands of comparable Megalodon teeth available to you, reader, at this moment, on many websites, being sold directly by the people who find them. Try searching in any browser. Many of them are larger and nicer than this tooth, and they are yours for less than 1,000 EUR. To drive this home, a little while ago I showed the tooth on Timeless to a professional dealer. The dealer was a bit surprised to see the scheme at all and was certainly surprised by the price quotes: they valued the Timeless tooth, charitably, at about 1,000 USD. There is nothing special about that tooth. It simply is not that valuable.

As I talk about in an upcoming book chapter, Megalodon teeth sell at Sotheby’s and Christie’s for far more than they should. Absurdly more. Like, so much more that I imagine whoever bought each one would do a browser search for Megalodon teeth after the sale and then feel cheated. We saw crazy Megalodon tooth prices again in the recent sale: four Megalodon teeth (they rarely offer more than 4 at once) with no special qualities and no special provenance, sold for substantially more than either the price estimates or the going rate for Megalodon teeth anywhere else online or in person. Indeed, a tooth that was only 4.76 inches long, in the low value length range and smaller than one I have on my desk that I got for free, sold for 22,860 USD. Based on traditional Megalodon pricing this makes no sense. And yet there it is.

The fractional ownership Megalodon tooth exists within this high-end auction bubble. The Timeless website says “Megalodon teeth specifically often exceed initial auction house estimates, with prices ranging above the $10,000 mark for a single tooth.” But THIS tooth will never sell at auction for that much money simply because the auction house (or its consignor) can source Megalodon teeth for much less and thus make a much larger profit. No one will see return on their fractional Megalodon tooth investment except perhaps Timeless. I imagine they paid the true market rate for this tooth (so, less than 1,000 USD), slapped the auction result figure on it, and invited people to send them $50 each for 110 fractions. Not a bad deal for them.

Are We All Left Holding The Bag?

A recent NYT article (here) about the big auction quoted Andre LuJan concerning fractional ownership and speculation regarding fossils shares. He said “It’s a way to take advantage of people’s optimism, but a lot of people are going to get left holding the bag.” LuJan may have been talking about all fractional fossil investing, but he was certainly talking about a recent investment deal in Wyoming that saw 40,000 shares towards the excavation of a Stegosaurus sold in “just 18 Minutes” (here). The Stegosaurus in question isn’t out of the ground yet but has apparently been appraised by someone at $13.75 million, and has been assessed by someone as being over 70% complete.

But who buys this Stegosaurus for that much money? Yes, Apex the Stegosaurus sold for 44.6 million USD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_(dinosaur)), but it was billed as “biggest and best”. Unless this one is “bigger and better”, the investors have at most the “second best” Stegosaurus on their hands. These buyers want “the best one” and if they can’t have the best stegosaurus, they can have the best other dinosaur that is on offer next. Then again, with shares at around 68 USD perhaps the moment of fleeting thrill is worth the rather low price? Being left holding a 50 Euro or 68 USD bag isn’t so bad.

But of course, investing fractionally in art or fossils is the epitome of commodification. It is never touching or loving the object. It isn’t acting with reverence. It very much hopes that the object won’t go to a museum because museums don’t have enough money to produce a big pay out. Fractional ownership strips back all pretense and keeps the object commodified. It doesn’t allow the object to drift back into the untouchable singularity space. This, in theory, might be the downfall of the system: these items need to be special to command high prices and fractional ownership and permanent commodification makes them seem not so special. They are just like everything else.