Let me give you my perspective on the matter. Art connects us with history. If we don't have a conscious stream going back to the Greek mathematicians such as

Let me give you my perspective on the matter. Art connects us with history. If we don't have a conscious stream going back to the Greek mathematicians such as Archimedes and Erastosthenes, how do we know they existed? In this case we actually don't have a nice conscious stream because of a little event called the fall of Rome and the dark ages. But the artifacts are as real a connection to early history as my school books with my writing are to my own early history, or yours. Anything connecting us directly to the Renaissance is inherently valuable, as is the Romantic era, or early industrial history. I value van Gogh for it's place in history, and for the fact that anything in the painting has to be from that date. If you do some kind of verification, you should see that the green pigment has to be the one that they used at that time, and may possibly look a bit faded to a more yellowy colour. Red pigment will probably be somewhat poisonous and blue may well be from a particular plant with a particular name. (IANAAH.) Going to the Renaissance is of course more complicated than going to van Gogh, going to the dark ages is more so, and even more so going back to Greece. The same holds for any civilisations such as the Maya, ancient China, Mesopotamia, and so forth. We are connected to the San only through very few artifacts and often they are too generic to know. We are but limited to paintings on overhanging rock faces. The money value is another argument, but if I had the money, I would buy a piece of history for $1m in the same way that I would buy a Fazioli or a Bosendorfer (the one with the octave lower, of course) for some $200k, new or old.