The free marketeers are determined to commodify everything. Their excuse is that putting a value on these scientific items will encourage their recovery. The truth is they want to profit from a resource they did nothing to develop. This is why they feel they have the god-given right to traffic in endangered species, plunder paleontological specimens and to loot archaeological sites at will.

If someone goes to the inconveneince and expense of recovering a rare object that might otherwise have been lost forever, then of course he deserves compensation. But a free market in these items will only encourage plunder, damage the contexual surroundings, and primarily benefit those individuals and organizations that have the immediate financial resources to monopolize the acquisition of this material and manipulate prices. It will create an artificial value for items of scientific interest that will make it difficult for legitimate scientific organizations to acquire them for study.

I propose a solution I just know they are going to love. Regulate the hell out these markets and put these grave robbers and ivory merchants out of business. Legitimate companies chartered and licensed to do this can then bid for contracts for recovery operations and it will be done properly. That meteorite fell out of the sky, it belongs to all of us.