Every significant car has a file. The file begins with the manufacturer, who recorded its specification, its delivery destination, and its first owner. It continues with the registration authorities of every country the car has lived in. It includes the service centres that have maintained it, the restorers who have worked on it, and the auction houses that have handled its sales. In many cases, it includes a chassis-number archive maintained by an owners' club or marque specialist, which is the reference work for the model and is consulted whenever a question of authenticity arises.

The file follows the car. When the car changes hands, the file goes with it, because the file is part of what the buyer is paying for. A car without its file is worth substantially less than the same car with the file complete. The market has been organised this way for as long as the market has existed.

The consequence for the present owner is that they are, in administrative terms, a recent chapter in a long file. The chapter records their purchase price, their address at the time of registration, their period of ownership, their use of the car at concours and rallies, their interactions with the service centre, and their decision to keep or sell. When they sell, the chapter is closed and the next owner's chapter begins. The file continues.

What the present owner can address is not the file itself, which is part of the asset, but the way the file connects to their wider public profile. The aggregators that index auction catalogues against their name. The press pieces that name them alongside the car. The concours programmes that list them as owner. The local press of the area in which the car is registered. Each is a layer through which the file reaches the wider public record, and each can be engaged with through the proper process.

This is the kind of work the desk attends to. Not the car. Not the file. The aggregators, the press, and the registers that connect them to the owner's wider record. The fuller account of how the desk approaches collecting of all kinds is set out in the desk's work on protecting collectors and the things they hold.