Mini Museum: Spinosaurus, Steve Jobs Turtleneck, SR-71, 14th Cent. Samurai Sword
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
I just went to an antiquarian book fair and there was a dealer selling medieval illuminated manuscript leaves (who's been there for many, many years), with a sign specifically addressing the concern, and basically saying "we didn't do it!". But it's hard to verify and the incentive is still strong, because you can get more from selling a hundred-page illuminated prayerbook as 100 $1000 leaves than as a $40,000 whole.
Overall I think people who care about the past in certain ways would prefer for artifacts to remain whole, even if that means we don't get to own them ourselves, much as with King Solomon proposing to cut the baby in half.
None of these items are unique, except perhaps Chuck's wedding cake.
As an example they have this to say about the 14th century samurai sword:
While lovely, the blade has a number of micro-fractures that made it unsuitable,
and potentially dangerous, as a collectible.There is some spectrum between a usable item and complete refuse, it feels like most of the stuff being cut up is closer to refuse, but I could be very wrong.
As an exaggerated example, you wouldn't chop up a Dead Sea Scroll into tiny fragments just because it's useless as bedtime reading. The fact that collectors would be willing to buy very tiny pieces of dead sea scroll (perhaps collectively netting more than the sale of a single intact scroll) doesn't make it okay.
Mosasaur is an impressive but common fossil in Kansas. You can offer a museum there a complete skull for free and unless it's remarkable for some reason they'll turn you down (or take it and sell it if they're shady, I guess). Complete skeletons aren't uncommon in private collections. Probably one of the easier impressive-looking ancient predators to acquire to hang over the entryway in your secret lair if you're a budget-consious supervillain. A hunk of jaw not connected to a larger find is a trash-tier item among Kansan collectors.
I'm guessing the story's similar for most of the other things on there (I don't know much about the rest).
[EDIT] I hadn't noticed how many of these things are fossils on my first look, so I guess I do know about more of them.
Broken Megalodon teeth are also so common that you couldn't give them away to a collector or museum—they have little to no value except for impressing kids or use in an art project (so, like this). That's not to say it doesn't cost money to get one, but they're not remotely rare. A large, whole (including ROOT and TIP!) one with intact, finely-detailed serration? That's another matter, but that's not what this is.
Broken dire wolf jaw, not that rare or scientifically valuable. Dunno about the Ankylosaur pieces but judging from the rest, probably not rare.
Don't know much about giant sloth fossils, but claws in general tend to be among the rarest single pieces of any given megafauna. Wouldn't be surprised if that cost them more than any of the other animal fossils to acquire. Still, unlikely it's anything a museum would care to have.
Jurassic tree: common enough you can buy really big, polished slices of it for under $100 if you know where to go. Unimproved, large hunks for less. My great-grandma had a an ~20lb piece eroding away in her rock garden, and she didn't even live near where you can pick it up off the ground and wasn't really into fossil collecting.
Crinoid: another Moroccan piece so this was going on the suckers' shelf at a touristy rock & fossil shop anyway. Not sure about this particular variety, but there are thousands of segments of these in the rocks outside my kids' school, and probably tens of thousands more in the creek next to it, all eroding away.
Mind, I don't mean to knock this product, just noting that destroying these fossils wasn't any kind of blow to science or global heritage or anything.
There are many of them but they are non-renewable. There is a finite supply of them.
And if we create market demand for them they might go very quickly. This is how we pushed rhinos into extinction. Rhinos seemed at some point to be very abundant, now they're gone for good.
The vast majority of fossils even those which are scientifically collected have no real value or use, many of them can't even be sold as cosmetic paper weights and are often disposed off simply because they take too much space.
Pretty much any aggregate that is dug from places that used to be under water and is made out of sediment and marine rocks is made out of fossils.
If you go to Morocco, Utah, Jordan Valley and 100's of other places around the world you can just spend some time pick up pretty nice looking specimens and go home. The 100 millionth dinosaur tooth or jawbone really doesn't add any value not to mention the 100 gazillionth coronoid that would otherwise end up in your parkway or your cat's litter box.
Like seriously visit Morocco https://sites.google.com/site/gemwanderings/morocco there and in many other places fossiles are litterarly the natural gravel in the dirt.
[EDIT] point being, losing a handful of not-very-impressive pieces for this is nothing.
If you go to places like morocco they sell the "nice ones" in large baskets on the market or on a side of the road, the ones that would end up in this kickstarted look like the gravel that is just naturally there.
There's nothing particularly important or special about the animal mummies that used to be processed into fertilizer. Just enormous piles of plaster, bone and dust in underground chambers, enough chambers to boggle the mind.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=Fossil+Collection+Spin...
Most fossils are "trash" and often end up in aggregate especially marine fossils.
These are so common and cheap that it would be more expensive to create a passable replica.
So in many cases even the "fake" ones are not fake they are just shark, alligator or any other more recent reptile rather than a dinosaur when it comes to teeth.
Morocco isn't a good place to buy teeth if you don't know what you are looking for simply because the local peddles don't know better. And shark teeth and crocodile teeth are also very common.