The relationship between people and things is a crucial avenue of investigation in understanding past cultures. An examination of the social contexts and the consequences of consuming material culture are integral to a fuller understanding of archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean. The interplay of these spheres provides an intriguing lens for the examination of the lure of relics from the Bronze and Iron Ages. This chapter examines the collecting of archaeological materials, the deleterious effects on the archaeological landscape and the object biographies of those artefacts enmeshed in the trade in antiquities. As artefacts are collected, they undergo a series of transformations, utilitarian and metaphorical. The chapter presents case studies, Moshe Dayan, the Israel Museum, the quest for an Israeli Past, Shelby White and Leon Levy, admiration for the Keros Hoard, to illustrate the varied high-end collecting personae and rationales involved with the acquisition and longing for archaeological material from the eastern Mediterranean.