[mbriant]

I've purchased some old, oxidized, bronze Roman rings, a Roman spear head, some ancient arrowheads from the middle east, and a prehistoric flint hand axe through ebay from a gallery in the Netherlands. The prices have seemed so reasonable, that it's hard not to suspect they're phonies, but from the photos of the retailer's brick and mortar location, and the displays of the antiquities they sell, the place seems legit. I would think that fraudulent sellers of this stuff would keep a much lower profile than this place.

I'm not sure of the legalities of it all, but I imagine there's more of this sort of product in circulation than people realize. I was recently reading about how in Siberia, with the ice/snow receeding like it has been, more and more fossils are being found. Scavengers are getting rich selling Mastadon tusks for $25,000 each and entire skeletons for up to half a million dollars.