In New Jersey is it Legal to Buy or Sell Human Bones

What? Weird, yes, but are you a bit curious. I know I am.

Maybe you like to collect things. There are so many items that are easily considered collectibles. From coins, stamps, stickers, dolls, little trinkets, etc. It's these things that when you go into a house that has so many collectables in a curio cabinet, you spend hours talking about.

I know many houses have the deer head on the wall, or a giant fish stuffed, but collecting human bones. This is more common than you think, I had no idea about this but it's true.

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There are Facebook pages for collectors, like this one Official Weird Second Hand Finds That Need To Be Shared. And, you guessed it, there was a question posted on there a while ago. It was a post from an antique shop that said "Real Human Bones" and they were for sale.

The person who made the post asked "is this even legal?"  Which had me wondering, is it? Is it legal in New Jersey? Who would have real human bones? What? So weird?

Is it legal to buy or sell real human bones in New Jersey?

The answer is YES. It's legal in New Jersey, that's crazy.

According to Jons Bones, there is no federal law prohibiting the sale of human remains. "Despite there being no major current production of human skeletal remains, there is no federal law preventing ownership, sale, or distribution of the bones in the US today, because this would make criminals out of average folks who have remnants of their education left in their homes. The only restrictions are on a state by state basis. Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee are the only states to have restrictions. So yes, it is completely legal to buy human bones in the US as long as you don’t live in those three states!"

There are of course laws surrounding the ownership of human remains. For instance, you can't just ask the funeral home for your loved ones' bones to be returned to you.  Legally they have to transport that body to its final resting place, and no, you can't rob the grave, that's also illegal.

This is the "big" question, why would someone have human bones? Here's our answer, You can find a really interesting article about bones and laws, click here. Many of the bones for sale today are old medical specimens or from the 1800s and earlier.