It's no stretch to believe that such a significant artifact would be scanned and replicated hundreds, thousands of times the quadrant over to interested parties in the archaeology biz. No doubt, Picard would have publicized the find and scanned replicator patterns of it. He would have submitted the original for testing and curation by experts, while replicating a souvenir display model for his turbulence-prone ship. He was an ethical, trained archaeologist, not some Home Shopping Network plate collector. The movie relic was clearly not the same artifact to the character; (though the actor didn't seem to know or care about the difference). Is it silly for fans to retcon this oversight? Yes, but when you invest so many years in characters and franchises these little things help you suspend disbelief, especially in the face of such obtuse production errors. Yes, OBTUSE. You don't have to worship at the altar of Roddenberry. How about just watching your own show? Hey, they made a mistake, they're only human. But this kind of mistake contains a seed of something fatal for a show: indifference for the franchise's continuity, and by extension, indifference for its audience. If I were an advertiser I would ask "How do you expect people to tune in when you are tuned out of your own franchise?"
