TFA mentions that he had a tanner make leather from human skin which (to me) implies it was mostly used to make counterfeits. There are a lot of valuable artifa

TFA mentions that he had a tanner make leather from human skin which (to me) implies it was mostly used to make counterfeits. There are a lot of valuable artifacts ranging from weapons and pendants made from bone to books bound with leather from human skin. Often times their macabre nature alone is enough to inflate the price. There are nondestructive low cost tests to easily verify human remains that unscrupulous collectors can use but determining how old those remains are is much harder, more expensive, and generally opens up the collector to outside scrutiny. That makes scamming such collectors a lot easier as long as you've got a reliable source of human remains.