In any case, the originals will not lie around like shrunken heads on a chiropractor's coffee table. Auctions are strange activities anyway. Sotheby's invented them in 1744 when a bookseller named Samuel Baker wanted to live better. Since then they have grown into wonderfully weird hybrids of culture and capitalism. In movies like North by Northwest and the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts, where Chico bids against himself, they are accurately portrayed as miniworlds of crookedness and anarchy.
Brawlers compete in cool frenzies of acquisitiveness.
The funny part is that all this stufflust is covered over by a sheen of hauteur, loads of English accents and names like Sotheby's and Christie's. No one ever got a catalog from Finkelstein's or the House of Lopez. Harmless snootiness, if you ask me. And auctions can be a lot of fun, which is why they have lasted. But they can also be tasteless and stupid, and revealing of us.