Mike,
Just to clarify, your argument is as follows:
1. There exists an illegal market in artifacts
2. There exists a legal market in artifacts
3. There exists an oversupply in low-historical-value artifacts which need not be kept by museums or research institutions.
4. If those low-historical-value artifacts were sold on the legal market, the illegal market in artifacts would likewise grow, thereby putting at risk as-yet undiscovered high-historical-value artifacts by unscrupulous researchers and/or freelance mooks with metal detectors.
If so, I sort of see your point, but I'm not convinced.......... As it is, I don't see how selling off items of limited historical value would suddenly spur the illegal market.---
You are correct- It won't. Number 4 does not follow. Competition lowers prices. Increasing supply lowers prices. Lowering prices reduces incentives to enter the market.
This is very similar to the idiocy shown when African country's make a big spectacle of burning giant piles of confiscated ivory, rather than issuing a use permit and selling it at or below the illegal trading value. At one stroke they had an opportunity to lower prices for illegal ivory, thus removing incentives for poaching, and also getting a chunk of money to help fund anti-poaching efforts. And the economic illiterates threw away the benefits to make a fancy fashionable eco statement.
For example, if one could buy a certified genuine mine ball from a battlefield for a few dollars from a Museum, or the Park Service, what incentive remains for for a illegal seller to go digging them up , with very little profit and risk of prosecution?
OT- On preview, why did a "barf" icon auto-insert after "African country" ,in my comment? I did NOT put it there. Someone is running some funny software or something- I will try to remove it. if ya'all don't see it, it worked.