Doc seemed very focused on risk/reward in terms of payout (not information or other intangibles) in his IC. While he was motivated to survive the encounter, he was searching for the largest possible payout even if it entailed additional risk. He was opposed to simply dumping it for a fraction of its value and washing his hands of the whole business. He wanted to get enough money up front to set up a new life rather than (safely) dumping the item for a pittance and relying on the team's skills and each other to provide security and answers going forward. While money makes setting up a new life easier, we are fully capable of starting anew without it, but that seemed an option that Doc was strongly against entertaining.
For Ohanzee, he wants to use the exchange as a way to advertise to all interested parties that they no longer have the item and any income is entirely incidental. Simply dumping it over a ravine would be an option except that people would still be coming after all of us hard to try to get the item. If we sell it to another party and make the transaction public enough that all parties know we no longer have it, they might still want to kill us, but they would have a harder time justifying ridiculous resources to it. And really, in the short term, they'd have to divert their resources to recovering it from whoever we sold it to, a likely more expensive prospect, leaving them with little to throw at us for a short while, giving us some breathing room to vanish and start anew. As Tec continually states, the less we ask, the less likely their cost/benefit calculation shifts toward geek the runners and steal the item. Giving it away isn't off the table, but it is likely that we won't be taken seriously unless we ask for something. A million seemed like a nice starting bid, but if some neutral fixer is willing to throw 100 grand our way for it, no questions asked, Ohanzee would consider it if he felt those pursuing them would turn their attention to negotiating with the fixer and leave them alone for a bit.
Hell, dropping it in a pit and just putting an ARO with the location in downtown Denver and letting everyone throw their resources into getting there first in force to claim it sounds pretty appealing to him. Everyone would throw every resource they had into beating the others to the artifact so that Team Purple could have a reprieve long enough to escape, and anyone bent on revenge would likely be bloodied enough from the effort that they would be able to pursue them less effectively for a bit. The major downsides to this are that a) dozens, if not hundreds, of people would likely die in the mad rush, and b) the artifact would be at risk for catching a stray bullet (or worse), risking its destruction and ensuing chaos. So we are back to plan A - public bid, private exchange.
It sounded from Doc's words that unless there was a significant payout from the artifact's sale, Doc wasn't interested, eliminating a large swath of options (some outlined above).
