Search the Community

I don't know to what extent this topic has been discussed before, but maybe it bears revisiting. Can we all agree it is bad practice for anyone to sell each half of a split pair separately? But to what extent is it bad - just a shame, or a travesty? Depends on the fossil, I guess, but who can say which fossil matters more? I think most dealers on our favorite auction site and elsewhere keep such pairs together, but I sometimes come across parts and counterparts being listed separately, and I usually suggest to the seller that they should sell them together. The response varies. Today I got: "You know what they say about opinions? To be honest with you, they WERE listed together and I dropped the price to list separately and offer them that way. Really this is a conversation not worth my or your time." Of course, money trumps everything - It appears that he had the pair listed together for a given price, and then split them into 2 auctions and lowered the price on each but not by a full half - so now they are more affordable individually, but the total, if sold, will come to more than the original combined price! Is there something we can do? I'd like to suggest to ebay that they at least recommend -if not require- sellers to keep split pairs together, but I would need some form of backup. It could be an uphill battle if they think it's just one lone guy with this nitpicking opinion. I could direct them (or individual sellers) to this page if I get enough supporting comments, especially from professional scientists and collectors who buy fossils. There is also a mineral/fossil dealer here on Vancouver Island who I've noticed sells split pairs separately, such as Eocene insects from the BC Interior. I tried to suggest he keep them together but it fell on deaf ears - I don't think he's really a fossil guy, he's more of a mineral guy and I don't know how to explain to him that it's bad practice with fossils. I guess I could explain that you wouldn't sell 2 pieces of a broken ammonite separately, and it's the same with compression fossils such as insects, worms and fish. They may appear to be mirror image duplicates but there are details that are different on each half if you look close enough. They are two halves of the same organism. I try to explain my concern, when I get the chance, that it's things like these that cause people (esp. professional paleontologists who are concerned with the science more than having an extra 'stamp' to add to one's collection) to advocate for restrictions or bans on the commercial fossil trade. I'm sure it's going to be a factor that will hurt all of us amateur collectors someday. So how universal is my opinion and to what degree do collectors and scientists agree with this and worry about it? I have reason to suspect it was this same V.I. dealer who found and split up a rare ophiuroid cluster that he found not far from me in Maple Bay, but I can't prove it and I won't mention his name. There is a piece of it being sold by a seller in France, with slightly incorrect info - I messaged him with the correct info, he said "thank you for the information" but still has not corrected the info in the listing. Here is the piece (not a good photo but I'm confident of its ID and provenance): I have a smaller piece of the original plate - this one appears to be somewhat larger than what I've seen so far, but if my piece is representative, there could be many of them floating around out there. A jigsaw puzzle that will never be reassembled. This incident is well-known in the Island paleo community and has been cited as an example of why fossil sales in the province should be restricted or banned. It should have gone into a museum, but of course museums around here don't offer to buy items, only offer a tax receipt, so the finder broke it up and sold it piece by piece. At the time it was legal (and I think it still would be now) but if the guy only realized the shame in what he did... If it's the guy I think it was, he is more of a mineral guy and likely is used to splitting up chunks into more easily handled/saleable pieces. He apparently doesn't think of such an assemblage as a snapshot of the seafloor community 85 million year ago and the behaviour of this species. Just a lucky concentration, like an ore body. Of course out-of-province fossils such as Moroccan and Madagascan ones are not covered by any B.C. policy. I realize I'm making a good case for banning the fossil trade but I'm not advocating this. I think it's OK as long as good practices are observed, such as not splitting up things that should be kept intact, and keeping accurate information with them. Donating scientifically valuable specimens to institutions is recommended, of course, but in lieu of that, I think if the aforementioned good practices are observed, some of the negative effects of the trade will be mitigated, in the off chance that someone should find a rare item or assemblage without realizing its ID or rarity. We can't expect all dealers or collectors to know exactly what they've got, but they have some responsibility, being in the field, so we could expect them to respect all of their specimens as if they were rare. It would be helpful if Ebay, being such a big part of the market, would adopt these policies or recommendations. They have all kinds of restrictions and other policies for other kinds of items.