A question about paying for lost media

I guess if someone's desperate enough, they're free to offer money or other reward in exchange for someone finding a piece of lost media. It's that person's possession after all.

It's not illegal and if you know someone who has something but will only sell it you're going to have to pay them. Capitalism in action. (Which also means it's not necessarily "lost", just rare or uncommon media if it had a commercial release.)

It may or may not be legal, but I wouldn't exactly want the IRS finding out about it.

Don't take legal advice from anyone on here lol (myself included), but what I will say is that I've seen a couple of people put "bounties" on prices of lost media on these forums, but I've never seen those promises fulfilled.