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Page 179
copy" is one which bears the signature of the author or any owner's mark of a famous person (obviously, these evidences can be forged in their turn). Normally, two bank notes of the same denomination are considered interchangeable by ordinary people, but if a given bank note marked with the serial number x was stolen in the course of a bank robbery, this, and this one only, becomes significant for a detective who wants to prove someone guilty.
(iv) Alleged association. A token becomes famous because of its supposed (but not physically evident) connection with a famous person. A goblet which is in outward appearance interchangeable with countless others, but was the one used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, becomes the Holy Grail, the unique target of an unending Quest. If the Grail is merely legendary, the various beds in which Napoleon slept for a single night are real and are actually displayed in many places.
(v) Pseudo association. This is a case in which a double looks like a pseudo double. A great number of tokens of the same industrial type (be they bags, shirts, ties, watches, and so on) are coveted because they bear the emblem of a famous producer. Each token is naturally interchangeable with any other of the same kind. It can happen, however, that another minor company makes perfect tokens of the same type, with no detectable differences in form and matter and with a forged emblem reproducing the original one. Any difference should concern only lawyers (it is a typical case of merely legal priority), but many customers, when realizing that they have bought the "wrong" token, are as severely disappointed as if they had obtained a serial object instead of a unique one.
2.3. Unique Objects with Irreproducible Features
There are objects so complex in material and form that no attempt to reproduce them can duplicate all the characteristics acknowledged as essential. This is the case with an oil painting done with particular colors on a particular canvas, so that the shades, the structure of the canvas, and the brush strokes, all essential in the appreciation of the painting as a work of art, can never be completely reproduced. In such cases a unique object becomes its own type (see section 5, and the difference between autographic and allographic arts). The modern notion of a work of art as irreproducible and unique assigns a special status both to the origin of the work and to its formal and material complexity, which together constitute the concept of authorial authenticity.
Frequently, in the practice of collectors, the temporal priority be

 
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