Purchasing ArtifactsFollow

Is it true that purchasing Artifacts at housing merchants is pointless, because you not be able to use them because you never did the encounter?.....or are there ever any exceptions, lets say in buying a staff that is actually an artifact as opposed to buying some magical type item such as Dream Sphere.

That being said, there is nothing special about the artifact that drops when you do the encounter- if you have credit, it doesn't matter where the artifact came from, you can still activate it.

Think of it like this though, Steve:

You want to get Battler. So you organize a group or two to go get it. The problem is, 5 other ppl want to roll on the artifact. So you kill him, the artifact drops, but you don't win it on the roll. Now you have artifact encounter credit, but no artifact. Will you wait for another time to go do it again and hope you win again? Or will you head to housing and buy it instead?