I laughed at the Conus spoof too. (Helmut did too, eventually: "Sawing down" rare mollusks to fit the cabinets? A good riposte.) But it does bring up a good question. If you find "countless" live specimens of one species on the seafloor, how many can one person feel justified in collecting? OK, let's say that you're a dealer. How many can you collect now? Now let's say that the mollusks are all dead. How many now? And now let's say that the mollusks are fossils. How many would it be reasonable to collect? If your answers are different in each case, or if you answer "Well, it depends...", then you know that the question in the subject line cannot be as simple as it looks. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama