What's it worth?

One of the questions that always comes up when I'm teaching, especially when I show lovely gold things like this Mycenaean death mask

So-called Mask of Agammemnon, Mycenaean, ca. 1500 BCE, gold

is "what is it worth?".  The answer is obviously more complicated than "it weighs 6 ounces and gold is $1591.15 today so $9546.45."  That's the material cost.  Doesn't count artist's hours.  And since we can't pay the artist in this case, we're paying the associated costs: excavation costs, finder's fees, importation taxes, shipping and handling, restoration/conservation, insurance, dealer costs, etc. etc.

But the real truth is--Art is worth whatever some schmuck (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) will pay for it.  Because what you can't value is the connection that makes the work speak to the individual in the first place.  Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann went looking for the actual sites because the Classical literature moved their hearts to belief.  I find the subsequent history of this piece particularly compelling since it was substantially changed to make it fit conceptual expectations of the death mask (which if you're interested, see this article by Kenneth Lapatin, who oversaw my MA thesis at BU).  There's age and rarity to factor in as well.

The reason this has come up is that a top story on GoogleNews today was that Bonnie and Clyde's guns were going up for sale; the expected sale could be anywhere between $100,000 and $200,000 but an expert quoted said "But really the sky is the limit for these types of guns."  What makes their value?  Is it just the artifact?  Clearly not.  If I wanted to buy a gun like Bonnie's Colt .38 caliber (of similar age) I could pick one up for a couple of thousands.  I don't want a gun like Bonnie's.  Even if I had a disposable sum for investment in an artifact.  There is no mystique for me in Bonnie and Clyde's early 30s robberies and murders against the national landscape of the Great Depression, illicit sex, dramatic end.  Makes a good story (against the realities of what that life must have been in reality--broken marriages, loneliness, failed jobs, the reality of murders, poverty between jobs).  These guns have the additional provenance of being their last guns--taken off of their dead bodies after the shootout in Louisiana in 1934.  Does the victory of lawfulness add to their value?  The bittersweetness of romanticized love and lawlessness coming to a tragic end? 

Depends on the schmuck with the checkbook, right?