I’ve been thinking recently about provenance. The question of provenance is not a question of whether something is genuine, but rather of whether people know that it is genuine.
Case in point: Some years back I received a gift from an acquaintance of mine who is quite well to do and is very into the history of space travel. He is one of those people who has genuine artifacts from the USSR space program in his house.
The gift was a vial of genuine moon dust. Given who I received it from, I am quite sure it was genuine. Had he held it up in public and said what it was, nobody would have doubted the truth of his statement.
However, the moment he handed it to me, it lost all provenance. It was still the same vial of moon dust, but it was no longer believably a vial of moon dust.
Sure, theoretically I could send it in to NASA for analysis, and they would be able to confirm that it is the genuine article. But who would pay for that, and what exactly would be the point?
So now that vial sits on my shelf, filled with genuine moon dust which has no provenance. But that’s not why I keep it there. It also happens to be filled with something even more precious — genuine sentimental value.