Reading a Specimen Label Like a Curator
The eight lines on an archive card tell you more than most sales listings do.
A collection number is not decoration. It anchors a specimen to a specific acquisition event, which means it can be cross-referenced against provenance notes, authentication records, and — where they exist — the original gatherer's own account.
Origin and region matter more than they're usually given credit for. 'Vietnam' tells you almost nothing on its own; 'Khánh Hòa' narrows the growing conditions considerably. Where a listing can only offer the country, treat that as information about the seller's records, not the wood.
Finally: a conservation note that says 'unconfirmed' or 'partial provenance' is not a red flag — withheld origin has been the market's default for centuries, as the trade-routes piece linked below explains. A red flag is a listing with no notes at all.
