CompuServe Messages

Hi, Todd– "people who don't have the time or the resources or the technical skill to find valuable specimens", if they have any interest in the specimens at all, should be pleased that commercial collectors are willing and able to do it and make specimens available for sale. The buyer is mostly paying for someone else's willingness to invest time, resources, and technical skill in finding the specimen. The buyer will also have to pay for any cost the land owner imposed on the collector; that part of the price will be nil if it was public land (unless there is some degree of investment to satisfy some tough new licensing regime, or charges are imposed for collecting on public land). In other words, people who can't or won't compete with my amateur collecting expeditions can in effect hire someone else to do it for them, by buying specimens. I will be the one at a handicap, since I have not the same expertise and resources the commercial types can bring to bear, but I can hire them also if I so choose. If anyone steals specimens from a mine you privately own, you have my permission to go steal their jewelry. But I see _no one_ here advocating plundering private property without the permission of the owner. Why do you keep talking as if someone did propose this? All of us are talking about convincing the owners of public lands (i.e., the public) to continue granting us permission to collect there. Someone has been trying to convince the stewards of the lands that they should move towards banning collecting without asking the owners (i.e., without taking a vote of all the public), so we are also talking of trying to convince the stewards not to change things without that vote of the owners. Those who are trying to lock us part-owners off the public land without the clear approval of the full ownership are the ones doing the stealing, if anyone is. –Doug