Appendix C — Red Flags

The inverse of the Collector's Questions: patterns that should stop you until explained. None is automatically disqualifying; each is a question the seller should be able to answer cleanly.

A mint that postdates the work's public life. The work circulated — exhibited, posted, sold — before its token existed, or was lazy-minted at the moment of purchase. The chain never witnessed its prehistory (Chapters Six and Nine).

A deployer no one will name. The contract's creating address has no public claiming, no body of work, no name bound to it — and no one in the sale can say whose hand it was (Chapter Eight; Appendix A, Step 4).

An origin that reads as infrastructure. The mint was signed by a platform, custodian, or service "on behalf of" the artist, and the artist's connection to it rests entirely on records the platform controls (Chapters Nine and Twelve).

Media on a single private server. The token is durable; what it points to is exactly as permanent as one company (Chapters Eight and Twelve).

A price history that circles. Funding that flows from the seller's side, volume without breadth of holders — the stage-set patterns of Chapter Nine, "The Ledger Keeps Lies, Too." The history is checkable; check it.

A living artist with no succession posture. For significant holdings: an address whose posthumous fate no one has considered is a catalogue that will never close on purpose (Chapter Twelve, "The Death of the Artist").

An answer that changes. The most classical flag of all. The chain's records do not change; sellers' stories sometimes do. When the story and the ledger disagree, believe the ledger.