The value in historic artifacts lies largely in the information they convey about ancient times. Replaceable things contain mostly mutual information with their replacements, so if you got a complete ancient bowl set, say, that would be a lot less informative than the same number of bowls from different sets, except on the matter of the existence of such sets.
Uniqueness/rarity of such things doesn’t increase total value, but it does increase marginal value (the value to gain or lose one more item).
The value in historic artifacts lies largely in the information they convey about ancient times. Replaceable things contain mostly mutual information with their replacements, so if you got a complete ancient bowl set, say, that would be a lot less informative than the same number of bowls from different sets, except on the matter of the existence of such sets.
Uniqueness/rarity of such things doesn’t increase total value, but it does increase marginal value (the value to gain or lose one more item).