Man, come on, of course they use casts, that's been normal for like a hundred years and nobody's hiding it from you. Real fossils are heavy, fragile, and worth a fortune, so no museum is gonna put the one-of-a-kind specimen out where some kid can knock it over, and a lot of the time the label does say cast somewhere in the fine print. You act like a resin copy is a trick, but it's the only way most people ever get to see a T. rex skull up close instead of a blurry photo online.

What did the retainer contract actually look like in terms of hours and scope? I ask because the trap I've seen is a $6k/month deal that quietly turns into 30+ hours a week, which is way worse per hour than the $40k project would've been. Did you lock in a set number of hours or deliverables per month, or is it open-ended support? That's the part that decides whether this was a smart move or just trading one kind of stress for another.