The most expensive paintings are from dead artists ... the longer they are dead, the more expensive.
Limited supply? Zero new supply.
A living artist may not be able to exactly reproduce his existing works but he can create similar new works.
Once he's dead, the supply is gone forever.
Every work of art lost in a fire or otherwise destroyed is like a bitcoin with lost keys. There's no replacing it.
Of course if Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" were destroyed in a fire, all remaining Van Gogh paintings would increase in value, just as every lost key increases the value of Bitcoin.
One of the problems that these NFT fucktards are having in identifying is just like you suggest, Jimbo, the death of the creator. They have some stupid-ass believes that if the signature of ownership of blah blah blah piece happens to be rare when there are all kinds of ways to replicate the dumb on another blockchain, from another angle, with the bitcoin blockchain backing it.. blah blah blah..
And one of the things that make bitcoins scarce is that they are both created (or brought into circulation) through a process that is unfuckable with.. well at least not more than a few blocks before it starts costing real ass money.
Anyhow, let those diptwats screw around with their various "creative" ways to try to describe scarcity out of something that is ONLY attempting to imitate (unsuccessfully of course) bitcoin, but largely saying that they are doing something else (of course, they are calling it important and earth-shifting), but it is hardly earth shifting, and ONLY means to trick people into thinking that there is some value there that is likely inflated beyond anything reasonable because it is playing off ignorance and failure to appreciate actual scarcity (which seems to largely be the same thing that you were saying, Jimbo)...