Interested in owning the skull of a martyr or the tooth of a saint? Apparently lots of people are, as the market for religious artifacts is booming. It takes a lot of faith to both be in the business of dealing holy relics and in that of buying them, as very few can be proven authentic beyond a shadow of a doubt. Although many newer pieces (i.e. objects touched by the Pope) are easily verified through photographs (when they're available) historical items from ages past are more about believing than anything else. And why else would you spend $975 on a wooden splinter from the True Cross that's so small you need a magnifying glass to see it, if you didn't simply believe?

We already knew Nicolas Cage was spendy, Ferraris, his own Bahamian island and a Bavarian castle have been among his legendary purchases. But this week saw a bidding war between Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio over a dinosaur skull. The Daily Telegraph reports that the two stars locked horns at a Beverly Hills auction over a 67 million-year-old dinosaur skull. Cage eventually won, for $276,000.

The article in the Telegraph goes on to chronicle the hot trend in all sorts of dino artifacts reporting that other dinosaur collectors include director Ron Howard and Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft chief and amateur paleontologist. Like art prices, the prices of fossils have had a steady uptick over the past ten years. This has been good news for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a commercial fossil company which has been involved in a variety of excavations including two Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons. The Great Plains area has yielded a variety of fossils and dinosaur bones.

In Italy, Greece and other European countries, some farmers have occasionally supplemented their incomes with finds from their land. The same seems to be true for some farmers in the US with dinosaur bones. For some, finding the bones can be a windfall in a time when drought has plagued the land. The article tells the story of Bucky Derflinger, from South Dakota who managed to buy a 4,000-acre cattle range with his share of the money from finding dinosaurs on his father's land. So perhaps in some very roundabout way, Cage and the other celebs snatching up dino remains at exorbitant prices are actually helping American farmers.