[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by drcy

In the expensive fine art world, they say keep your sales receipt because it turns out to be stolen, you legally get your money back from the seller. As an item may have been stolen a long time earlier, the seller may in turn get his money back from the person he bought it from. And so on down the line. Stolen items has long been an issue in the art world, and many buyers will expect you to demonstrate the provenance and legal ownership of a Picasso.

If an item was stolen, you can't legally buy or sell it. You may have paid $5,000, but you don't legally own it. This is why, as a buyer, you should be confident the item you are buying wasn't stolen. Stolen items do exist in the baseball hobby market.

I have no knowledge of the NYPL and its practices and if David says they've never gotten rid of stuff I have no reason to doubt him, but other libraries and even museums do sometimes get rid of extra stuff. Museums have sales, often to get rd of extra stuff or because they're changing the museum's focus.

+1

And said material is always clearly marked as such precisely for the reasons cited above.